It is incomplete — every map built in 30 days is — but you have sat with your team, asked questions rather than answered them, and started to understand the terrain. You know some names, some histories, some patterns. You have a sense of where the energy lives and where it drains. You have probably already noticed at least one thing that needs attention.

Now the work changes.

Days 31 through 45 are where listening becomes learning — and where learning gets tested by the first moments that require you to actually respond. Not with a plan, not with changes, but with the kind of presence that tells your team whether the listening was real.

This phase looks different depending on which type of manager you are. And both types face a version of the same underlying question: do I trust what I am seeing, and does this team trust me yet?

What You Are Looking for in This Phase

The shift from listening to learning is not about gathering more information. It is about starting to understand what the information means.

Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety — the degree to which people feel they can speak up, take risks, and be honest without penalty — shows that trust in a new manager is not built in grand gestures. It is built in the small moments: how you respond when someone brings you a problem, what you do when something goes wrong publicly, whether your behavior in week five matches what you said in week one.

By Day 31, people are no longer observing you neutrally. They are starting to form conclusions. This window is when those conclusions either solidify into trust or harden into skepticism.

Days 31–45 | Learn

If You Were the Doer

By this point, you have almost certainly seen something done in a way that is not how you would do it. Maybe several things.

The question this phase is asking you is not whether you are right about how it should be done. It is whether the way you respond to that gap builds or erodes the team’s willingness to show you more.

David Rock’s SCARF model from neuroleadership research identifies status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness as the core social needs that either activate the brain’s threat response or its reward response. When a new manager steps in and begins correcting how things are done — even with good intentions — it often activates status and autonomy threats simultaneously. People shut down. They stop sharing. They start performing for the manager rather than doing their actual best work.

The doer-turned-manager who learned to intervene by executing faces a real identity tension here. Not stepping in can feel like negligence. But the distinction worth sitting with is this: are you correcting because the outcome is genuinely at risk, or because the method does not match yours?

If the outcome is fine, hold the correction. Ask instead. What made you approach it that way? What would you do differently next time? You will learn more about the team’s thinking, they will feel respected for their judgment, and you will have given them the chance to surface their own insight rather than receive yours.

This is also the phase where the identity shift from Blog 14 becomes tangible. You are no longer the person solving the problem. You are the person deciding who should solve it, and what they need from you to do it well.

If You Never Did the Work

By Day 31, the novelty of your arrival has worn off. The team has watched how you handle a few things. And you are likely navigating a dynamic that does not come with a clear script: you are making decisions that affect work you do not fully understand yet.

This is the phase where the temptation is to over-rely on the team’s most vocal experts — the people who have been most forthcoming with information, who seem most aligned with your thinking, or who have made themselves most accessible. That instinct is understandable. It is also worth being cautious about.

Daniel Goleman’s research on social awareness in leadership suggests that the most important skill in this phase is not absorbing technical knowledge — it is reading the relational landscape accurately. Who is being heard on this team? Whose expertise is going unrecognized? Where is the quiet competence that has not had the right conditions to surface?

The manager without technical background has a specific advantage here that is easy to overlook: you are not beholden to how things have always been done because you do not carry the assumptions that come with deep domain knowledge. You can ask the question that the expert would never think to ask — not because it is naive, but because you are not inside the paradigm.

Use that. Ask the team to explain things to you as if you have no context. Watch what lights people up when they talk about their work. Notice who goes quiet in meetings and what they are quiet about.

The manager who does not have the technical history can see things the expert cannot — because they are not yet blinded by what has always been true.

The First Real Test

Somewhere in this window, something will go sideways. It might be small — a miscommunication, a missed deadline, a decision that landed poorly. Or it might be significant.

How you handle the first real friction is more defining than almost anything in your first 45 days. Not because people are waiting to catch you — most are not — but because it is the first time your stated values have to hold up under actual pressure.

If you said in week one that you wanted people to bring you problems early, and someone does, and you respond with frustration or blame, that will be remembered. If you said you were here to support the team, and the first conflict reveals something different, the map people made of you in the first 30 days gets redrawn.

This is not about being perfect. It is about being consistent. Adam Grant’s research on trustworthiness in leadership points to consistency as the single most reliable signal of whether a leader’s stated values are genuine. People can forgive a mistake. What they do not easily forgive is discovering that what you said was not what you meant.

Questions worth sitting with

• Where am I seeing capability on this team that has not yet been fully recognized?

• Am I responding to a gap in performance, or a gap between their approach and mine?

• Who has gone quieter in the last two weeks — and what might that mean?

• When something went sideways, did I respond the way I said I would?

  Leave a comment

The map is getting clearer. In Blog 16, Days 46 through 90, the work turns from learning to leading — and both types of managers face the same challenge: responding to what you now know without getting ahead of what the team is ready for. You can find that piece, and the audio version of this one, at www.asbatra.com.

www.asbatra.com | www.drjessicaherbert.com

Part of the New Manager Series

Subscribe now

Maybe you stepped into a team that already had its rhythms, its inside jokes, its unspoken rules — and no idea what to make of you. Maybe you were promoted from within and now the people who used to grab lunch with you are calling you by your title. Maybe you walked into a role in a field you know well, or one you are still learning. Maybe the team was warm and welcoming and you still felt the ground shift.

All of that is normal. None of it means you are not ready.

What it does mean is that the way you added value before — through speed, expertise, execution — is not what the next 30 days are asking for. This phase has one job: listen before you lead.

This blog is the first of three. It covers Days 1 through 30. The next one picks up at Day 31, when the listening starts to turn into something. The third takes you through Day 90, when leading with intention becomes the work. All three address two kinds of new managers — because the experience is not the same for both.

The Pressure to Prove Yourself Early

The first thing most new managers feel is the pull to demonstrate value quickly. Show the people above you that the promotion was right. Show the team that something is going to change. Show yourself that you can do this.

Michael Watkins, in his research on leadership transitions, identifies this as one of the most common failure points in new roles — not incompetence, but impatience. Acting before understanding. Signaling certainty before it is earned.

The first 30 days are not the time to prove you have answers. They are the time to prove you ask good questions.

Days 1–30 | Listen

If You Were the Doer

You were good at the work. That is why you are here. And that same capability — the drive to execute, to fix, to improve — is now the thing most likely to get in your way.

When you know how something should be done, it is genuinely hard to watch it being done differently. When you see a gap, the instinct is to fill it yourself. When a problem surfaces, every part of you wants to solve it.

In the first 30 days, the practice is not solving. It is understanding why the problem exists.

This matters more than it sounds. Teams that have been managed by high-performing doers often develop a learned dependence — they stop problem-solving because the manager always does it. Or they stop bringing problems forward because they already know the answer they are going to get. The trust you want to build in this phase is a different kind than the respect you earned as an individual contributor. It is trust that you are here to help them grow, not to demonstrate that you are better.

Your most valuable action in the first 30 days is not execution. It is restraint — the kind that creates space for others to show you what they are capable of.

What this looks like practically:

One-on-one conversations with every person on your team — not performance reviews, not goal-setting yet, but genuine conversations. What do you find most meaningful about your work? What makes it harder than it needs to be? What would make this team better?

When something comes to you broken, ask the person bringing it what they think before you offer a solution. You will learn more about the team from how they answer that question than from almost anything else.

Name the transition directly. Acknowledging to your team that the dynamic has shifted — and that you are committed to earning the role, not just holding the title — lands differently than pretending nothing changed.

If You Never Did the Work

You were not promoted because of your technical depth in this field. You were promoted because of how you think, how you build, how you lead. And now you are managing people who may know far more about the daily work than you do.

The instinct in this position is to compensate. To read everything, ask a lot of domain questions, demonstrate that you are catching up fast. Some of that is appropriate. But the version that goes too far — where you are visibly trying to prove technical competence you do not have — tends to erode trust rather than build it.

Simon Sinek’s work on trust in leadership points to a consistent finding: teams trust leaders who are honest about what they do not know more than leaders who project false confidence. Technical expertise is one form of credibility. Relational honesty is another. In the first 30 days, the second one travels further.

What this looks like practically:

Name it early, and mean it. Something like: My background is not in what your team does day to day. I was brought here because of how I lead, and I intend to earn that. I will lean on you for the technical picture. What I can offer is clarity on direction and someone who will show up for this team.

Then do that. Ask questions about the work from a place of genuine curiosity rather than evaluation. The difference is perceptible to people who live in that work every day.

Your first 30 days are about learning the language of this team — not fluency, but enough to understand what they are telling you when they describe their work, their friction, their pride.

You do not need to be the best in the room at what your team does. You need to be the person who makes it possible for the best in the room to do their best work.

What Both Types Share in the First 30 Days

Regardless of how you arrived here, the first 30 days hold the same essential work: building the map.

Not a plan — a map. A genuine picture of the terrain: who this team is, what they care about, where they have been, what has worked, what has not, and what they are hoping this change in leadership might finally make possible.

That map cannot be built from observation alone. It requires conversation. It requires presence. And it requires that you enter those conversations without a predetermined agenda for what you are going to do with what you learn.

William Bridges, in his work on organizational transitions, makes the point that change is an event and transition is the internal process people go through to make meaning of it. Your team is in transition whether or not they have named it that way. The quality of how you show up in these 30 days shapes what that transition becomes for them.

Questions worth sitting with

• What do I know about this team from their work — and what am I still assuming?

• Who on this team is carrying something no one has named yet?

• Am I entering conversations to understand, or to confirm what I already think?

• What does this team need from a manager that they have not had before?

  Leave a comment

  ---

  Days 1–30 are covered. In Blog 15, we move into Days 31–45 — when the listening starts to become pattern recognition, and when both types of managers hit their first real test of trust. Find that piece, and the podcast version of this one, at www.asbatra.com. If you are in the middle of this transition right now and want to think it through, a Transformation Call is a good place to start.

  Subscribe now

Before committing to a direction, they want to see the numbers. They want to run the scenarios. They want to know what happens if the plan works, what happens if it does not, and what happens in the unlikely event that something no one predicted walks through the door.

I am one of those leaders. And if you are reading this, you probably are too.

This is not about being pessimistic or overcautious. It is actually one of the more disciplined forms of thinking available to us — one that neuroscience and behavioral research suggest is closely tied to how high performers navigate uncertainty without being paralyzed by it.

The challenge is that the same analytical rigor that helps you prepare can, under the wrong conditions, keep you from moving at all. The goal is not to eliminate uncertainty. It is to develop a relationship with it that allows you to lead through it.

Why Your Brain Wants the Data First

The prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for planning, decision-making, and anticipating consequences — does not work well in a vacuum. It needs input. When it does not have enough information, it tends to treat ambiguity as a threat, which activates the stress response and makes it harder to think clearly.

Research in cognitive neuroscience, including work from Matthew Lieberman at UCLA, suggests that naming and framing uncertainty — actually putting language and structure around what you do not know — reduces the emotional activation in the brain associated with threat. In practical terms, this means that building a scenario framework is not just a strategic tool. It is a regulatory one.

When you sit down and map out what might happen, you are not just preparing a plan. You are telling your nervous system that you have considered the terrain. That matters for how you show up, and for how your team follows you.

The goal is not to predict the future. It is to be less surprised by it.

What Scenario Planning Actually Is — and Is Not

Scenario planning is often misunderstood as catastrophizing or as a sign that you lack confidence in a decision. It is neither. Annie Duke, in her work on decision-making, draws a useful distinction between the quality of a decision and the quality of its outcome. A good decision can still produce a bad outcome. And a bad decision can, by luck, produce a good one.

Scenario planning is the practice of separating those two things. It asks you to evaluate the decision itself, not just the result you are hoping for.

The basic framework involves four quadrants of possibility:

The best case and worst case scenarios are the easy ones. Most leaders spend time there. The more valuable exercise is the most likely scenario and the wild card, because those are the ones that reveal where your assumptions are doing the most work.

Where are you counting on things to go right? Where is the plan fragile? What would have to be true for this to fail quietly rather than loudly?

These questions are not meant to stop you from deciding. They are meant to make the decision sturdier.

The Strengths — and the Stalls

Analytical thinking has real advantages in leadership. It reduces blind spots, builds team confidence, and grounds conversations in evidence rather than assumption. But it also carries a shadow side that is worth naming directly.

The stall tends to happen when the analysis stops being in service of the decision and starts becoming a substitute for it. In psychology, this is sometimes called analysis paralysis — and it is worth understanding that it is not a character flaw. It is often a stress response dressed up as diligence.

Dr. Gabriele Oettingen’s research on mental contrasting offers a useful corrective here — and if you caught the Directed Fire blog earlier in this series, you will already have a framework for this. The WOOP practice we explored there is not just a goal-setting tool. It is also a stall-prevention one. When you have already done the work of naming your wish, your outcome, your obstacle, and your plan, you have less room to hide in the analysis. The path is visible. The only question left is whether you are willing to step onto it.

How to Use This with a Team

One of the more underused applications of scenario planning is as a team preparation tool. Not just for strategic decisions, but for transitions — leadership changes, restructures, new initiatives, cultural shifts.

When a team has been through the scenario exercise together, they are less likely to be destabilized by early friction. They have already mentally rehearsed a version of it. Research in sport psychology on mental rehearsal, later extended to organizational contexts by researchers including Cheryl Travers, shows that teams who have pre-built a shared understanding of possible challenges experience lower stress and faster recovery when those challenges arrive.

This does not require a full strategic planning retreat. A 45-minute conversation structured around three questions can do meaningful work:

What does success look like at 90 days, and what would have to be true for us to get there?

What is the most likely obstacle we will encounter in the first 30 days?

If that obstacle shows up, what is one thing we can do in advance to be ready for it?

These questions move the team from passive recipients of a plan to active participants in its execution. That shift matters more than most leaders realize.

The Line Between Prepared and Stuck

There is a version of this that serves you and a version that holds you hostage.

Prepared looks like: you have mapped the likely terrain, you have named your assumptions, you have built in a recovery path, and you have made a decision with the information you have.

Stuck looks like: the scenarios keep expanding, the data never feels complete, the plan keeps getting revised before it is executed, and the decision keeps getting deferred because something might change.

James Clear, in his work on behavior and systems, notes that one of the more consistent patterns in high performers is what he calls a bias toward motion — not reckless motion, but the recognition that some information is only available through action. You cannot scenario plan your way into certainty. At some point, the data you need is on the other side of the decision.

A useful self-check: If you have run your scenarios, named your assumptions, identified your recovery path, and you are still not ready to decide — it may be worth asking what you are actually waiting for. Sometimes the answer is legitimate. More often, the answer reveals something about risk tolerance or identity that is worth sitting with.

Preparation is not the opposite of risk. It is the practice of taking risk consciously.

A Practice Worth Keeping

If you are someone who thinks in data and comparisons, the scenario planning process is likely already part of how you operate. What this is an invitation to consider is whether you are using it as a launch pad or a landing pad.

The most effective leaders I have worked with use analytical rigor to build confidence — in themselves, in their teams, and in the direction they are moving. They are not attached to any single scenario being correct. They are attached to having done the thinking.

That is the difference. Not whether you plan, but what the plan is for.

Leave a comment

If any of this is landing close to home — if you are someone who prepares thoroughly and still finds yourself hesitating — that is worth a conversation. You can schedule a Transformation Call at www.asbatra.com, or catch the podcast version of this piece wherever you listen. The work is not in the data. The work is in what you do with it.

Subscribe now

www.asbatra.com | www.drjessicaherbert.com

I walked away from a role that was stable, respected, and by all external measures, successful. People asked what I was going to instead. I didn’t have a clean answer. I just knew that staying was costing me something I couldn’t afford to keep paying.

That decision changed everything. Not because it was easy; it wasn’t. But because it taught me the difference between bold and reckless. Between strategic risk and self-sabotage. Between quitting because something is hard and quitting because it’s no longer right.

As we close out the first month of the Fire Horse year, this is the question I want to leave you with: What bold move have you been avoiding?

The Myth of Playing It Safe

We’re taught that risk is the dangerous option. That staying the course is prudent. That the smart move is to protect what we have.

But here’s what that framing misses: inaction is also a choice. And it carries its own costs.

Every hour you spend on something that no longer serves you is an hour unavailable for something that might. Every ounce of energy poured into maintaining a commitment you’ve outgrown is energy you can’t direct toward what’s really calling you forward.

Economists call this opportunity cost. Psychologists call it the sunk cost fallacy - the tendency to keep investing in something simply because we’ve already invested so much. We tell ourselves we can’t quit now, not after everything we’ve put in. But that logic traps us in patterns that stopped making sense long ago.

The real risk isn’t making a change. It’s waking up years from now having never made one.

Quit or Double Down?

Annie Duke, former professional poker player and decision strategist, wrote an entire book challenging our cultural bias against quitting. Her research reveals something uncomfortable: we are systematically terrible at knowing when to walk away.

We stay in jobs, relationships, projects, and commitments long past the point of diminishing returns—not because we’ve assessed the situation clearly, but because quitting feels like failure. We’ve moralized persistence to the point where it overrides strategy.

But Duke distinguishes between quitting and strategic resource reallocation. The question isn’t “am I tough enough to keep going?” It’s “given what I know now, is this still the best use of my limited resources?”

Your resources—time, energy, attention, money, emotional bandwidth—are finite. Every ‘yes’ is a no to something else. Strategic leaders understand this. They regularly audit where their resources are going and ask whether that allocation still reflects their priorities.

In my podcast episode on this topic, I talk about the framework I use with clients: separating identity from investment. We get attached to projects and paths because they’ve become part of how we see ourselves. Walking away feels like losing part of who we are. But you are not your job title, your business model, or your five-year plan. You’re the person making choices about those things. And you can make different choices when the information changes.

Assessing Real Risk

Bold moves require discernment, not just courage.

The Fire Horse energy is powerful, but fire without direction creates destruction. Before you leap, it’s worth getting clear on what you’re actually risking—and what you’re risking by not leaping.

I ask clients to consider three questions:

What’s the real worst-case scenario? Not the catastrophic fantasy your anxiety generates at 2 a.m., but the actual likely downside. Most bold moves are recoverable. We overestimate the permanence of failure and underestimate our own resilience.

What’s the cost of staying? This one is harder to see because it’s gradual. The slow erosion of energy. The opportunities that pass while you’re busy maintaining something that’s stopped growing. The person you’re not becoming because you’re too invested in who you’ve already been.

What would you advise a friend? We’re notoriously bad at assessing risk when we’re inside the situation. Distance creates clarity. If someone you respected came to you with your exact circumstances, what would you tell them?

Dr. Brené Brown talks about the difference between fitting in and belonging—how we contort ourselves to meet expectations that were never ours to begin with. The same applies to our commitments. Some of what you’re carrying was handed to you. Some of it you chose under different circumstances. Not all of it still belongs in your life.

The Collateral Calculation

I want to be honest about something: bold moves have costs.

When you change direction, some people won’t understand. Some relationships will strain. Some bridges may burn—not because you lit the match, but because the bridge couldn’t handle you moving.

This is real, and it deserves acknowledgment. In my work with leaders navigating transitions, I’ve seen the grief that comes with outgrowing contexts that once fit. The loneliness of being misunderstood by people who knew the old version of you.

But I’ve also seen what happens when people refuse to move because they’re managing everyone else’s comfort. They shrink. They resent. They lose access to the version of themselves that was trying to emerge.

The question isn’t whether bold moves have costs. They do. The question is whether the cost of staying small is one you’re willing to keep paying.

Designing the Path Forward

I want to close with a challenge.

You’ve spent this month exploring what actually fuels you, aligning your vision with your values, and creating space to think. Now it’s time to act.

Not recklessly. Not impulsively. But boldly.

What have you been tolerating that you’ve outgrown? What resource—time, energy, attention—is being spent on something that no longer deserves it? What decision have you been postponing because the status quo feels safer, even though it’s slowly costing you?

The Fire Horse doesn’t hesitate at the edge. It commits.

This doesn’t mean burning everything down. It means being honest about what needs to change and having the courage to change it. It means reallocating your resources toward what actually matters rather than what simply persists.

You have nine more months in this year. How you spend them isn’t predetermined. It’s designed—by you, through the choices you make and the ones you finally stop avoiding.

The Invitation

Before this month ends, I want you to name one bold move you’ve been circling.

Not the safest option. Not the one everyone would approve of. The one that keeps surfacing in quiet moments. The one that scares you a little because it matters.

Write it down. Say it out loud. Tell someone who will hold you to it.

And then ask yourself: what would it take to actually make this move? Not someday. This year.

Fire Horse energy is here. The question is whether you’ll ride it or watch it pass.

Leave a comment

This post part of my Year of the Fire Horse series on aligning energy, building momentum, and setting ourselves up for sustainable success.

For a deeper exploration of when to quit versus double down, listen to my podcast episode on strategic resource reallocation and the decisions that shape our paths forward. Listen here

If you’re ready to stop circling and start moving—with support, clarity, and strategic thinking—I work with leaders navigating exactly these moments. One-on-one transformation coaching and small group intensives are available. Book a call

If I wasn’t booked, I wasn’t valuable. If I had a free afternoon, I’d fill it—sometimes with work, sometimes with errands, sometimes with scrolling that masqueraded as “catching up.” The discomfort of unscheduled time was almost physical. Stillness felt like falling behind.

It took burning out twice before I understood what any campfire could have taught me: fire needs air to burn.

Pack logs too tightly and the flame suffocates. No oxygen, no combustion. The same is true for us. When we eliminate every gap in our schedules, we don’t create more productivity. We starve the very thing that makes productivity meaningful.

The Cult of Doing

There’s a particular trap that high-performers fall into, and it’s not laziness. It’s the opposite.

We become so identified with output that rest feels like regression. We measure our days by what we completed, not by what we thought or felt or allowed to emerge. And we’ve built entire systems—calendars, task managers, accountability structures—designed to ensure we never stop moving.

Brigid Schulte, in her book Overwhelmed, calls this “time confetti”—the way our attention gets shredded into tiny, scattered pieces that never quite add up to anything whole. We’re technically always doing something, but rarely doing anything that requires sustained thought or genuine presence.

The result isn’t just exhaustion. It’s a slow erosion of our capacity to think clearly, solve complex problems, and access the creativity that leadership actually requires.

What the Research Says About Thinking

Here’s what neuroscience has revealed about how insight works: it doesn’t happen when we’re grinding.

Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang’s research at USC found that the brain’s default mode network—the system that activates when we’re not focused on external tasks—is essential for processing experiences, consolidating learning, and generating creative connections. When we never give this network room to operate, we lose access to our deepest thinking.

Teresa Amabile’s research at Harvard reinforces this from another angle. Her studies on creativity and time pressure found that people are least creative when they’re rushing. The “aha” moments we chase don’t come from pushing harder. They come from what she calls “incubation”—periods where the conscious mind steps back and lets the subconscious work.

And then there’s Manoush Zomorodi’s work in Bored and Brilliant, which documented something our phones have nearly eliminated: the generative power of boredom. When we fill every gap with stimulation, we never enter the slightly uncomfortable state where our minds start making unexpected connections.

The pattern is consistent across the research. Space isn’t the absence of productivity. It’s the prerequisite for the kind of thinking that actually moves things forward.

Creating Space in Transition

If you’ve listened to my podcast episode on building new schedules during transitions, you know I talk about this as one of the most disorienting—and most important—parts of change.

When you leave a role or enter a new one, your calendar often empties in ways that feel alarming. The meetings that structured your days disappear. The constant requests dry up. And suddenly you’re faced with something unfamiliar: time you have to fill intentionally rather than reactively.

Most people panic. They immediately start cramming the space with new commitments, networking coffees, projects that feel productive. They recreate the breathless pace they just escaped because the alternative feels too uncertain.

But transitions offer a rare opportunity to get this right. To build a schedule that includes air from the beginning, rather than trying to retrofit it later when you’re already suffocating.

The question isn’t just “what do I need to do?” It’s “what do I need to think about?” And “when will I actually think about it?”

What Space Actually Looks Like

I want to be specific here, because “create more space” can sound like advice for people with lives very different from yours.

Space doesn’t require hours of meditation or clearing your calendar for a week. It requires intention about the gaps:

Protected thinking time. Cal Newport’s research on deep work suggests that even 60-90 minutes of uninterrupted thinking time can dramatically improve cognitive output. But it has to be protected—not just hoped for. I block what I call “big brain time” on my calendar and treat it like a meeting with someone I can’t cancel on. No email. No Slack. Just the problem or project that needs real thought.

Transition buffers. Back-to-back meetings aren’t just exhausting—they eliminate the processing time your brain needs between contexts. Even ten minutes between calls to walk, stretch, or stare out a window allows your default mode network to briefly engage. Those minutes compound.

Unstructured mornings or evenings. Depending on your chronotype (which we explored in the last post), protecting the first or last hour of your workday from reactive tasks can create surprising room for reflection. I’ve learned that my best thinking happens before I open email. Once I’m in response mode, the creative channel closes.

Scheduled boredom. This sounds absurd, but it works. A walk without a podcast. A commute without a phone. Five minutes sitting with coffee before the day begins. These micro-doses of unstimulated time are where insights surface.

The Discomfort Is the Point

Here’s what I won’t pretend: this is comfortable.

The first few times you sit with an open calendar block, your brain will rebel. It will generate urgent tasks you’d forgotten. It will insist you check something, respond to something, fix something. The pull toward doing is strong because doing feels safe. Thinking—real thinking—requires tolerating uncertainty.

But resilience is built in this discomfort. The capacity to sit with not-knowing, to let ideas develop before forcing them into action, to trust that your mind is working even when your hands aren’t—this is what separates reactive leaders from reflective ones.

And creativity? Creativity lives here. In the pause. In the air between the logs.

The Invitation

This week, I’m not asking you to overhaul your calendar. I’m asking you to find one gap and protect it.

Thirty minutes where you don’t check your phone. A walk where you leave the earbuds at home. A morning where you sit with your coffee and your thoughts before the world starts asking things of you.

Notice what happens. Notice what surfaces.

Fire Horse energy wants to run, and it should. But even the most powerful fire needs oxygen to keep burning. Your space isn’t slowing you down. It’s what allows you to sustain the pace at all.

Leave a comment

This post is part of my Year of the Fire Horse series on aligning energy, building momentum, and setting ourselves up for sustainable success.

For more on building schedules that actually support how you think and work, listen to my podcast episode on creating new rhythms during professional transitions. Listen here

If you’re ready to stop reacting and start designing how you spend your time and energy, I offer one-on-one transformation coaching for leaders navigating change. Book a call

Vision boards. Goal-setting workshops. Word of the year declarations. The energy was everywhere—and I felt like I was already falling behind by not matching it.

It took me years to realize I wasn’t broken. I was just operating on a different calendar.

January, for me, is recovery. It’s the exhale after the holidays, the slow re-entry after a season that asks too much of everyone. My body knows this even when the productivity culture around me insists otherwise. The real launch energy doesn’t arrive until February—when the days start lengthening again and something in me finally feels ready to move.

If you resonate with this, welcome. You’re not late. You’re on time.

And if you’re someone who did create goals on January 1st? This is your moment too—not to abandon what you started, but to check whether it’s actually working.

The Review Before the Push

Six weeks into any plan is the perfect time to get honest.

Not harsh. Honest.

What’s gaining traction? What felt inspiring in the glow of a fresh year but now sits on your list creating low-grade guilt every time you look at it? What have you been avoiding, and what does that avoidance tell you?

Dr. Gabriele Oettingen’s research on goal achievement reveals something counterintuitive: pure positive visualization can actually decrease motivation. Her WOOP method (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) suggests that lasting change requires us to pair our vision with clear-eyed assessment of what’s getting in the way.

This isn’t pessimism. It’s directed energy.

The Fire Horse doesn’t waste power running in circles. It finds the path and commits. But commitment requires knowing—really knowing—what you’re running toward and why.

Vision Boards as Values Maps

I’ve made vision boards that were beautiful and completely useless.

Gorgeous images. Inspiring quotes. A collage of things I thought I should want because someone else made them look appealing. Six months later, I couldn’t remember why half of those images were there.

The vision boards that actually work—the ones that pull me forward when motivation fades—are built differently. They’re not wish lists. They’re values maps.

When I sit down to create one now, I start with my Wheel of Life reflection. Where am I thriving? Where am I depleted? Where have I been coasting on autopilot, telling myself I’ll get to it later? The categories shift depending on the season, but they usually include health, relationships, career, finances, creativity, growth, rest, and contribution.

From there, the question isn’t “what do I want?” It’s “what matters?”

There’s a difference. Wanting is often borrowed—absorbed from social media, family expectations, professional norms. What matters comes from somewhere deeper. It survives the test of “why does this actually matter to me?” asked three times in a row.

Reaction Mode vs. Direction Mode

Here’s what I see in the leaders I work with: most of them aren’t lacking ambition or capability. They’re lacking direction—not because they don’t know what they want, but because they’ve lost access to it under the weight of everyone else’s demands.

When you’re in reaction mode, your calendar fills with “have tos.” Your energy goes toward putting out fires, answering asks, and managing the expectations of people who may or may not share your values. You end the day exhausted but unable to name what you actually moved forward.

Direction mode is different. It starts with clarity about what matters—not in some abstract, permanent sense, but right now, in this season of your life. And it requires something uncomfortable: protecting that clarity even when it disappoints people.

This is where values-based balance becomes operational rather than theoretical. In the piece I wrote a few weeks ago, I talked about balance not as daily equilibrium but as a series of intentional choices across the long arc of a career. Your vision board, when it’s working, becomes the filter for those choices. Does this opportunity align? Does this commitment serve what I’ve said matters? If not, what would I need to release to make room for what does?

Building It Now

If you haven’t created your vision board yet—or if the one you made in January needs a serious revision—here’s where I’d start:

Begin with reflection, not aspiration. My Wheel of Life worksheet walks through each major life category and asks you to assess satisfaction, identify what’s working, and name what needs attention. You can’t aim well if you don’t know where you’re standing.

Then let your values lead. For each category where you want growth or change, ask: what would alignment actually look like? Not perfection. Not someone else’s version of success. What would feel like integrity—like you’re living in accordance with what you say matters?

From there, the images and words you choose will mean something. They’ll be anchored in self-knowledge rather than aspiration borrowed from someone else’s life.

Finally, build in a review point. I check my vision board quarterly, not to judge my progress, but to see if what I thought mattered in February still matters in May. Sometimes it does. Sometimes life has revealed something new. The board should be a living document, not a contract you signed with your past self.

The Invitation

Fire Horse energy wants to run. That instinct isn’t wrong—it’s powerful. But power without direction just creates exhaustion and collateral damage.

Before you push into the next season, take an hour. Review what you’ve already set in motion. Get honest about what’s working and what’s just taking up space. And if you haven’t built your vision for the year yet, start with what matters rather than what impresses.

Your energy is too valuable to spend on goals that aren’t actually yours.

Leave a comment

This post is part of my Year of the Fire Horse series on aligning energy, building momentum, and setting ourselves up for sustainable success.

Ready to get clear on what actually matters? Download my Wheel of Life Reflection worksheet to assess where you are and set values-aligned goals for the year ahead.

If you want to go deeper, the podcast version of this post includes my own vision board review—including the goal I finally admitted wasn’t mine. Listen here

For leaders ready to stop reacting and start directing their energy with intention, I offer one-on-one transformation coaching and small group programs. Book a call

Subscribe now

If I could just accomplish enough, check enough boxes, receive enough external validation—I’d feel energized. Ready. Alive.

What I really felt was depleted. Restless in a way that more sleep couldn’t touch. I was running on something, but it wasn’t energy. It was obligation dressed up as ambition.

The Fire Horse is known for its intensity and drive. But fire without discernment just burns everything down, including us. As we step into this Year of the Fire Horse, the invitation isn’t to do more. It’s to finally get honest about what actually sustains us versus what we’ve been told should.

The Should Fuel Problem

Here’s what I’ve noticed across the leaders I work with: most of us are operating on fuel sources we inherited rather than chose.

We run on deadlines because urgency feels productive. We run on other people’s expectations because disappointing someone feels worse than exhausting ourselves. We run on caffeine and adrenaline and the quiet dread of falling behind.

And it works. For a while.

Emily and Amelia Nagoski, in their research on burnout, describe this as an ‘incomplete stress cycle’—we activate our fight-or-flight response repeatedly without ever completing it. The stress accumulates. The tank empties. And we wonder why we can’t seem to recover even when we finally get a break.

Real fuel is different. It comes from alignment between what we’re doing and what actually matters to us. It comes from bodies that feel regulated, not just managed. It comes from knowing ourselves well enough to work with our natural rhythms instead of against them.

Your Body Already Knows

Before we can redirect our energy, we often need to release what’s been stuck.

Stress lives in the body. It doesn’t care how many times you tell yourself to relax or how many productivity systems you’ve implemented. Until you complete the stress cycle physically, your nervous system stays activated—burning fuel even when you’re sitting still.

This is where practices like body tapping, yoga, and tai chi become more than wellness trends. They’re neurological resets.

Body tapping (also called EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique) uses gentle percussion on specific meridian points to signal safety to your nervous system. Research published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease found that tapping significantly reduces cortisol levels—sometimes in as little as one session. When I’m spinning before a difficult conversation or can’t seem to settle into focused work, sixty seconds of tapping the collarbone and side of the hand shifts something that willpower alone never could.

Yoga and tai chi work similarly, using movement and breath to complete what Dr. Peter Levine calls the “discharge” of stored survival energy. You don’t have to master either practice. Even five minutes of slow, intentional movement—cat-cow stretches, gentle twists, the simple tai chi “commencement” form—tells your body that the threat has passed. That you can come back to baseline.

These aren’t indulgences. They’re maintenance. You wouldn’t expect your car to run without ever changing the oil. Your nervous system has the same requirements.

Working With Your Rhythm, Not Against It

Once your energy is no longer being hijacked by accumulated stress, the next question is how to deploy it wisely.

Daniel Pink’s research in When reveals something most of us sense but rarely honor: our cognitive capacity fluctuates predictably throughout the day based on our chronotype. Most people experience a peak, a trough, and a recovery period—but the timing varies.

If you’re a morning person (about 75% of the population), your sharpest analytical thinking happens in the first few hours after waking. The afternoon brings a slump—not a personal failing, just biology—followed by a recovery period where creative and insight work actually thrives.

Night owls experience this pattern in reverse.

The problem is that most of us schedule reactively. We let meetings, emails, and other people’s urgencies consume our peak hours, then try to do strategic thinking when our brains have already left for the day.

Consider this instead: What if you protected your peak hours for what I call “big brain” work—the thinking that requires deep focus, creativity, or complex problem-solving? And what if you deliberately batched administrative tasks, routine emails, and low-stakes decisions into your trough, when that’s all your brain really has capacity for anyway?

This isn’t about optimizing yourself into a machine. It’s about working with the body and brain you actually have instead of the one hustle culture says you should.

An Experiment

This week, I want to offer two small invitations:

First, notice what happens when you give your body a chance to release stress before demanding more from it. Try two minutes of tapping before your next challenging task. Take a five-minute movement break when you feel your shoulders creeping toward your ears. See what shifts.

Second, pay attention to your own energy patterns. Track when you feel sharp and when you feel foggy for a few days. Not to judge, just to observe. Then ask yourself: what would change if I took that information seriously?

The Fire Horse doesn’t conserve energy—it channels it. The difference matters.

Leave a comment

This post is part of my Year of the Fire Horse series on aligning energy, building momentum, and setting ourselves up for sustainable success.

If this resonates, you might enjoy the podcast version where I go deeper into my own experiments with chronotype and stress release—including the morning routine that finally stopped feeling like punishment. Listen here

For leaders ready to stop running on fumes and start building something sustainable, I offer one-on-one transformation coaching and small group intensives. Book a call

Subscribe now

I had been in the workforce long enough to have made a significant shift - from public safety to private corporation work. I had a Master’s degree. Certificates in several topics. Years of experience building something that was supposed to matter.

And yet I found myself lying awake wondering if I wasn’t ready. Wasn’t smart enough. Didn’t have whatever edge everyone else seemed to have.

I wasn’t alone in that feeling. In the eighteen years since, I’ve met countless emerging leaders in that same space - wondering if the way they learned and operated was keeping them competitive enough. Wondering if they’d survive the next reorganization, the next round of layoffs, or if they’d ever make it to the company that had the opportunities they wanted.

They were stuck in the collision between “hurry up and get experience” and “how do I get experience without having it first.”

And they were confused about what balance was supposed to look like in the middle of all that pressure.

The Myth We’ve Been Sold

Here’s what most people think balance means: leaving work at the same time every day. Having a hobby. Making sure you don’t miss too many soccer games or dinner dates.

It’s a nice idea. And it’s completely inadequate for the reality of a career.

Because balance isn’t about achieving some daily equilibrium between work and life. It’s not about making sure every role you play - student, employee, manager, parent, partner, child - gets equal attention at all times.

That’s not balance. That’s a recipe for exhaustion.

The truth is, your career will have at least twelve significant shifts over time. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the average American holds about twelve to thirteen jobs between the ages of 18 and 56. And those aren’t just job changes, they’re transitions. Shifts in identity, responsibility, and how you spend your days.

Each of those transitions takes time. And time to move through.

That’s where real balance lives. Not in the daily juggle, but in the long game.

The Infinite Game

Simon Sinek, building on the work of philosopher James Carse, makes a distinction between finite games and infinite games.

Finite games have clear rules, known players, and a defined endpoint. Chess. Football. A job interview. You play to win, and when it’s over, someone is declared the winner.

Infinite games are different. There’s no final score. No moment when someone is crowned the champion. The goal isn’t to win, it’s to keep playing.

Business is an infinite game. So is a career. So is life.

You can beat out other candidates for a job, but no one is ever crowned the winner of careers. You can get the promotion, but there’s always another level, another challenge, another transition waiting.

When you approach your career as a finite game - chasing the next win, the next credential, the next milestone - you end up exhausted. Because there’s no finish line. You keep running, and you never arrive.

But when you approach it as an infinite game, the question changes. It’s no longer “how do I win?” It’s “how do I keep playing in a way that matters?”

The Balance That Actually Works

Real balance isn’t about distributing your time equally across every role you play. It’s about making decisions that serve the long game - the infinite game.

It’s not about being good at every role simultaneously. Some seasons, work demands more. Some seasons, family does. Some seasons, you’re in deep transition and everything feels uncertain.

Balance is about making decisions over time that align with your values and intentions. Not perfecting every day, but building a life that, when you zoom out, reflects what actually matters to you.

When you’re living in your values, when you’re making decisions with intention, you’re less malleable to the constant external demands that burn people out.

But when you’re chasing everyone else’s asks - the next certification because someone said you need it, the next degree because it looks good, the time in a role doing work you don’t care about because it’s supposed to lead somewhere - you won’t have balance.

You might get paid more. You might get the promotion. You might check all the boxes that are supposed to mean success.

And then you realize your nights are spent checking email instead of eating dinner with friends. You haven’t had a vacation in months. Your blood pressure is high. Your sleep is terrible.

That’s not balance. That’s a finite game you’re losing even when you win.

What Balance Actually Looks Like

When you make decisions to live in your values - and balance those decisions over days, months, years - you have balance.

Some days you work late. That’s fine. That’s part of the rhythm.

But you’re not at a friend’s funeral one day, suddenly remembering all the times you said no to the dinner invite. You’re not sitting in a doctor’s office getting news about your health and realizing you sacrificed your body for a job that would replace you in two weeks.

Balance isn’t about never working hard. It’s about knowing why you’re working hard, and making sure that reason actually matters to you.

It’s about recognizing that your career isn’t a sprint with a finish line. It’s a series of chapters, each with its own demands, and your job is to write a story you can live with when you look back.

The Pressure That Doesn’t Serve You

That crushing pressure I felt in my thirties? The fear that I was losing my edge?

It was real. But it was also a symptom of playing a finite game in an infinite arena.

I was measuring myself against benchmarks that didn’t actually matter to me. I was chasing credentials and positions because they seemed like the right moves, not because they aligned with what I valued.

The emerging leaders I work with feel the same pressure. They’re caught in a system that tells them to hurry up, get more experience, get more certifications, climb faster—all while feeling like they’re never quite enough.

But here’s what I’ve learned: the people who find balance aren’t the ones who figure out how to do everything. They’re the ones who get clear on what actually matters to them, and make decisions from that place.

They stop playing someone else’s game. They start playing their own.

The Questions That Matter

If you’re feeling the pressure of constant striving—if balance feels like a myth you’ve given up on—here are the questions worth sitting with:

Are you playing a finite game or an infinite one? Are you trying to win something that has no finish line? Or are you building something that can sustain you across the many chapters of your career?

Whose asks are you chasing? Are the certifications, the degrees, the time in roles doing work you don’t love—are those your choices? Or are they responses to what someone else told you success should look like?

What would decisions from your values actually look like? Not what looks good on paper. What actually matters to you. What would your days, weeks, and years look like if you built them around that?

What are you sacrificing, and is it worth it? Not in the abstract. Specifically. Your health. Your relationships. Your sense of who you are. Is what you’re gaining worth what you’re giving up?

Leave a comment

Dr. Jessica Herbert is the founder of Asbatra Coaching, where she works with high-performing professionals and teams navigating transitions. Through 1:1 coaching, small team programs, retreats, and workshops, she helps leaders build careers that sustain them across the infinite game. Learn more at www.asbatra.com, www.asbatra-retreats.org, or visit www.drjessicaherbert.com.

Ready to redefine balance on your own terms?

Listen to the full audio version of this blog on the Asbatra podcast. If you’re tired of chasing someone else’s version of success and want support building a career that actually fits your life, book a transformation call to explore what’s possible.

Or join us for the Recalibration Retreat (October 24-29, 2026 in Costa Rica)—five days to step out of the daily grind, get clear on your values, and design the next chapter of your infinite game. Early enrollment by March 20, 2026 saves $500. Learn more here.

Subscribe now

Someone starts as a doer. They’re good at the work, really good. They build relationships with colleagues, earn respect through competence, and develop a reputation for getting things done.

Then they get promoted. Manager. Director. VP. The titles change, the responsibilities shift, and suddenly the relationships that defined their professional identity start to strain.

It happens in cyber tech. In local government. In academia. In healthcare. The specifics differ, but the dynamic is the same: you transition into a new role, and others don’t quite know how to relate to you anymore.

Or you don’t know how to relate to them.

When the World Gets Small

Professions are smaller than people think. The longer you’re in a field, the more your network overlaps and intersects. You work with someone at one organization, then encounter them again somewhere else. Colleagues become peers, become supervisors, become direct reports as people move through their careers.

This means that when you transition into a new role, the people around you may not recognize that transition. They remember who you were. They relate to the version of you they knew before.

Yesterday, you were a peer. Today, you’re the person conducting audits on every unit. Yesterday, you were in the trenches together. Today you’re making decisions that affect their work, their teams, their livelihoods.

That shift creates tension, even when everyone has good intentions.

The Dynamic No One Talks About

I’ve watched this play out in organizations of all sizes.

A high performer gets promoted to manage their former peers. Suddenly, the easy rapport feels awkward. Conversations that used to flow naturally become stilted. People aren’t sure what they can say anymore, or how their words will be received.

Or someone moves into a leadership role at a new organization, and the people there don’t know their history. They only see the title, not the person. Trust has to be built from scratch, but the new leader is already making decisions that affect people’s work.

The relationship cost isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s subtle - a distance that grows, a connection that fades, an unspoken tension that nobody addresses.

But left unmanaged, these small fractures compound. They affect morale, collaboration, and the very outcomes you were promoted to improve.

Belonging Versus Fitting In

Brené Brown makes a distinction that matters here: the difference between belonging and fitting in.

Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to get accepted. It’s shape-shifting, adapting, presenting whatever version of yourself seems most likely to work in that moment.

Belonging is different. Belonging is showing up as who you actually are and finding connection from that authentic place.

Brown puts it simply: fitting in is the greatest barrier to belonging. When you twist yourself into what you think others need you to be, you might gain acceptance…but it’s conditional. It’s fragile. And it’s exhausting to maintain.

This matters enormously during career transitions.

When you step into a new role, there’s pressure to fit in. To prove you belong in this new position. To act like a director, a VP, a leader - whatever that means in your organization’s culture.

But if fitting in means abandoning the authenticity that built your relationships in the first place, you’ll find yourself isolated in the very role you worked so hard to earn.

Two Ways to Enter a New Role

I’ve seen leaders enter new roles in fundamentally different ways. And the approach they choose determines whether relationships strengthen or fracture.

The first approach looks like this: the leader comes in, says nothing about their intentions, observes quietly, and then makes a series of decisions. Changes get announced. Protocols shift. New expectations appear.

And everyone’s head is turning in confusion and frustration.

It’s not that the decisions are wrong. Sometimes they’re exactly what needs to happen. But people don’t know why. They don’t understand the end goal. They don’t see where things are going; they just know they’ve been slapped with change.

This approach damages relationships because it treats people as objects to be managed rather than humans to be engaged. It creates anxiety, resistance, and distrust - not because the leader intends harm, but because they never invited people into the process.

The second approach looks different.

The leader walks in with clarity: “I am here to do X. For the next month, I’ll be meeting with everyone, observing, and getting your input. Then we’ll make changes together that allow us to reach X.”

Same destination. Completely different journey.

This leader communicates intention. They set expectations. They create a container for the change that’s coming, so people can prepare themselves emotionally and practically.

And here’s what happens: relationships strengthen instead of fracturing. People feel respected. They understand where things are going, even if they don’t love every decision. Trust builds because the leader did what they said they would do.

The Intention You Haven’t Named

If you’re stepping into a new role - or if you’ve been in one for a while and relationships feel strained - ask yourself: have you named your intention?

Not just to yourself. To the people around you.

What are you here to do? How will you approach it? What can people expect from you?

When you voice this clearly and then follow through, it builds relationships rather than breaks them. People know what to expect. They can align with your leadership. They can offer input, raise concerns, and engage with the direction rather than just reacting to decisions that seem to come from nowhere.

This is about more than communication strategy. It’s about treating the people around you as partners in what you’re building, not obstacles to be managed.

The Clarity That Changes Everything

Here’s what I’ve learned from working with leaders in transition: the ones who navigate relationships well aren’t the ones who avoid change. They’re the ones who are clear about who they are and what they’re trying to accomplish.

They don’t pretend to be something they’re not to fit in. They don’t abandon their values to seem more “leader-like.” They show up as themselves, and they invite others into that.

They say things like:

• “Here’s what I’m seeing and what I think needs to change.”

• “I want to hear your perspective before I make decisions.”

• “This is new for me too, and I’m still learning.”

• “My goal is X. Help me understand what’s getting in the way.”

This kind of transparency isn’t a weakness. It’s the foundation of trust.

And it’s what makes the difference between relationships that survive a transition and ones that don’t.

The Questions Worth Sitting With

If you’re navigating a role transition - or managing someone who is - here are the questions worth asking:

Have you named your intention out loud? Not just thought about it. Said it. To the people who will be affected by your decisions.

Are you trying to fit in or belong? Are you shape-shifting to match what you think a leader should be? Or are you showing up as yourself and building connections from there?

Do the people around you know where things are going? Not every detail. But enough to orient themselves. Enough to feel like participants rather than bystanders.

What relationships have shifted since your transition - and have you addressed them? Sometimes the distance between you and a former peer isn’t about the role. It’s about the unspoken tension that neither of you has named.

Leave a comment

Dr. Jessica Herbert is the founder of Asbatra Coaching, where she works with high-performing professionals and teams navigating transitions. Through 1:1 coaching, small team programs, retreats, and workshops, she helps leaders build relationships that strengthen through change rather than fracture. Learn more at www.asbatra.com, www.asbatra-retreats.org, or visit www.drjessicaherbert.com.

Ready to navigate your transition with clarity?

Listen to the full audio version of this blog on the Asbatra podcast. If you’re stepping into a new role and want support building relationships that last, book a transformation call to explore what’s possible.

Or join us for the Recalibration Retreat (October 24-29, 2026 in Costa Rica)—five days to step back, get clear on who you are as a leader, and design how you want to show up in your next chapter. Early enrollment by March 20, 2026 saves $500. Learn more here.

Subscribe now

That’s the job. Someone has a mess. You help them figure it out. You dig into what’s broken, find the gaps, and build the systems that should have existed all along.

But here’s what I’ve learned after years of sitting across from leaders who stepped into roles they didn’t fully understand until they were already in them: the most dangerous thing a fixer can do is stay in fixing mode forever.

Because at some point, the question stops being “What needs to be repaired?” and starts being “What am I actually building here?”

And that’s a question too many leaders never stop to ask.

What Fixers Walk Into

Let me paint the picture, because you might recognize it.

You get promoted. Or you’re hired from the outside. You step into a new role with energy, ideas, and the belief that you can make things better.

And then you realize what you’ve inherited.

Nothing is written down. The processes that exist are informal at best - people just know how things work because they’ve been doing it this way for years. There’s no clear structure for professional development, no formal conflict resolution, no documentation of how decisions get made or who has authority over what.

In some cases, it’s worse. You’re following a leader who created a toxic culture. Who managed through fear, favoritism, or neglect. And now you’re standing in the wreckage, trying to figure out where to even start.

The team is hurt. They’re skeptical. They’ve seen leaders come and go, and they have no reason to believe you’ll be any different. Trust isn’t just low, it’s been actively damaged, and the memory of that damage can stretch back years.

You’re not just stepping into a role. You’re stepping into a history you didn’t create but are now responsible for addressing.

The Fixer’s Trap

So you do what fixers do. You observe. You listen. You make the quick wins where you can: new equipment, small process improvements, maybe a personnel change that everyone knew needed to happen.

And then you dig into the real work. Rebuilding trust. Restructuring teams. Shifting a culture that has calcified around dysfunction.

This is hard, slow, necessary work. And it can consume you.

Here’s the trap: fixers get so absorbed in cleaning up someone else’s mess that they forget to define what they’re building instead.

You’re putting out fires. You’re alleviating immediate pain. You’re responding to the urgent because everything feels urgent when you’ve inherited chaos.

But responding to what’s broken isn’t the same as building something that lasts.

The Cost of Staying in Fix Mode

When leaders stay in reactive mode too long, the cost compounds.

The natural phases of change - resistance, uncertainty, gradual acceptance - stretch far longer than they should. Morale stays low because people can’t see where things are going. They only know what you’re against, not what you’re for.

Time and money get wasted on decisions that address symptoms rather than root causes. You’re treating the headache without asking why it keeps coming back.

And here’s what I’ve seen in organization after organization: when a fixer doesn’t shift into builder mode, they end up recreating a different version of the same dysfunction. Not intentionally. But the patterns repeat because no one stopped to design something different.

The Badge of Burnout

There’s another pattern I see in teams that have been through toxic leadership: the badge of burnout.

Somewhere along the way, a busy calendar and long hours become the measure of commitment. If you’re not overwhelmed, you’re not working hard enough. If you’re not sacrificing, you’re not a real leader.

This is a legacy too, one that often predates the current leader. And fixers can accidentally reinforce it by modeling the very behaviors they’re trying to change.

If you’re leading a team that equates exhaustion with productivity, ask yourself: Did you inherit that, or are you perpetuating it?

Because a full calendar isn’t a sign of efficiency. Long hours aren’t a benchmark of impact. And a team that wears burnout like a badge isn’t a team that will sustain the changes you’re trying to make.

The Misalignment No One Talks About

Here’s something else fixers walk into: roles that aren’t what they appear to be.

You assume someone is a decision-maker because their title suggests it. But when decisions don’t get made, you judge them for avoiding responsibility.

Except maybe they were never actually empowered to make those decisions. Maybe the structure assumed something that was never formalized. Maybe no one ever told them that call was theirs to make.

I’ve worked with organizations where long-standing relationships among staff - careers spent together, decades of history - created an invisible structure that had nothing to do with the organizational chart.

In some ways, this is a gift. Those relationships built trust, familiarity, and shortcuts that made things work.

But in other ways, it’s a liability. The informal processes that grew over time never got formalized. Professional development happened through relationships, not systems. Conflict got managed through hallway conversations, not documented processes.

And when something breaks - when trust is damaged, or legitimacy is questioned - the memory of that break can linger for years. Because there’s no formal structure to address it, only the informal one that created the problem in the first place.

From Fixing to Building: The Shift That Matters

This is where the real leadership work begins.

Daniel Goleman’s research on emotional intelligence identifies two competencies that matter enormously here: self-awareness and social awareness. Self-awareness is knowing your own emotions, recognizing how your moods and motivations affect others. Social awareness is reading the room - understanding what other people are feeling, sensing the dynamics that aren’t spoken out loud.

Fixers often have strong technical skills and strategic thinking. But the shift from fixing to building requires something different. It requires leading through the change, not just managing the change.

“Because I’m the boss now” doesn’t work. The system that allowed poor leadership to exist in the first place is still the system you’re operating in. Barking orders or flexing authority only reinforces the patterns you’re trying to break.

Building requires you to acknowledge what happened before you got there. To name the hurt, the harm, the illegitimate actions - not to assign blame, but to make it possible for people to move forward.

It requires a human-centric approach that speaks to what people have already experienced before you can ask them to experience something new.

William Bridges, who studied organizational transitions, distinguished between change - the external event - and transition, the internal psychological process people go through as they come to terms with a new reality. Leaders who understand this know that announcing a new direction isn’t the same as helping people get there.

The ending has to be acknowledged before the new beginning can take root.

What Legacy Actually Looks Like

So what are you building?

Not “what are you fixing?” Not “what are you reacting to?” but “what will remain when you’re gone?”

Legacy isn’t about the problems you solved. It’s about what exists because you were there.

It’s about motivated staff who believe in where the organization is going - not because they’re told to, but because they helped shape the direction.

It’s about talent acquisition and retention that happens naturally because people want to work in a culture that works.

It’s about sustainable change that doesn’t depend on one leader’s personality or presence, but rather systems that continue to function, develop, and improve even when the person who built them moves on.

This is what separates fixers who burn out from leaders who build something lasting. The fixer asks, “What’s broken?” The builder asks, “What should exist here that doesn’t yet?”

The Questions Worth Asking

If you’re a leader who inherited dysfunction - or who’s been so deep in fixing mode that you’ve lost sight of what you’re building - here are the questions worth sitting with:

What will people say about this team or organization after I leave? Not what problems were solved. What was created?

Am I modeling the culture I want, or the one I’m trying to change? If your calendar is full and your hours are long and your stress is visible, you’re teaching your team that this is what leadership looks like.

Have I acknowledged what happened before I got here? Not to dwell on it. But to make it possible for people to close that chapter so a new one can begin.

What exists because of me that will outlast me? Systems. Culture. Capability in others. Something.

Leave a comment

Dr. Jessica Herbert is the founder of Asbatra Coaching, where she works with high-performing professionals and teams navigating transitions. Through 1:1 coaching, small team programs, retreats, and workshops, she helps leaders build organizations that outlast them. Learn more at www.asbatra.com, www.asbatra-retreats.org, or visit www.drjessicaherbert.com.

Ready to shift from fixing to building?

Listen to the full audio version of this blog on the Asbatra podcast. If you’re a leader navigating organizational change and want support defining your legacy, book a transformation call to explore what’s possible.

Or join us for the Recalibration Retreat (October 24-29, 2026, in Costa Rica)—five days to step back, recalibrate, and design the leadership legacy you want to leave. Learn more here.

Subscribe now

When I transitioned from that role I got the lesson: what you did before has little bearing on what comes next. I wasn’t moving into another role for public safety – so all those statistics, they didn’t matter.

As a data scientist, this was one of many times I noted that the measurements didn’t meet what mattered.

The same held true for corporate work. For years, when people asked what I did, I had an answer ready. I led strategic initiatives. I worked with [insert important person they would know]. I managed teams. I sat in rooms where decisions got made. And the titles that came with those responsibilities—they weren’t just job descriptions. They were proof. Proof that I was smart enough, capable enough, worth listening to.

I didn’t consciously decide to build my identity around those titles. But every meeting and email added another layer to who I thought I was supposed to be. Every new responsibility reinforced the story I was telling myself about success.

It didn’t take long for me to feel misaligned: Those titles didn’t mean much to me, and often didn’t mean much to others. Just tell someone a different title or role at the next networking event and see how they judge you.

Clients I worked with wanted to know my values, how I was grounded in the work, the point I moved from to make all the impacts.

The Way We’re Programmed to Think About Success

In the United States and other countries, we’re taught early that success is something you earn through hard work. Long hours. Climbing the corporate ladder. Titles and promotions and corner offices.

We measure ourselves by external markers: the job, the salary, the recognition. And for a while, it works. You hit the milestones. You get the validation. You feel like you’re moving in the right direction.

Until you don’t.

Because somewhere along the way, the titles stop meaning what they used to. The promotions don’t bring the satisfaction they promised. And you start to realize that you’ve built an entire identity around things that were never actually yours to begin with.

You didn’t choose them. Someone else told you they were important. And you believed them.

What Happens When the Titles Don’t Fit Anymore

I see this pattern repeatedly with the leaders I work with.

They’ve spent fifteen, twenty, sometimes thirty years building successful careers. They’re good at what they do. They’ve earned the promotions, the recognition, the respect. From the outside, everything looks perfect.

But internally? They’re struggling.

They wake up thinking, “This isn’t me anymore.” And then they go to work and perform the role they’ve been performing for years. Because they don’t know what else to do. Because leaving would mean losing the identity they’ve built. Because everyone knows them as the VP, the Director, the Executive—and without that title, who are they?

The most common thing I hear when leaders finally step away from roles that no longer fit? “I feel like I don’t exist.”

Not because they aren’t capable. Not because they lack value. But because they’ve spent decades defining themselves by something external - and when that’s gone, they don’t know how to define themselves from the inside.

That’s what we lose when we tie our identity to titles, roles, and external markers of success. We lose ourselves.

Building a Life Around Your Best Self

Tracee Ellis Ross, in a conversation about personal fulfillment, said something that shifted how I think about all of this: if you focus on being yourself, you build a life around that best self—rather than focusing on getting to some point someone else defined as important.

Someone else “defined as important.”

That phrase sits with me. Because when I look back at the titles I carried, the promotions I chased, the version of success I was performing—how much of that was mine? How much of it was what I thought I was supposed to want because that’s what success is supposed to look like?

Ross also said, “The more I am myself, the more my life looks like me.” Not “the more successful I am.” Not “the more I achieve.” The more I am myself.

That’s not about titles. It’s not about promotions or external validation. It’s about alignment. Building a life that reflects who you actually are, not who you think you should be.

And that requires something most of us aren’t taught to do: define ourselves by our values and characteristics, not by our roles.

What the Research Says About Values-Based Living

There’s research that backs this up, and it’s worth paying attention to.

Studies by psychologists Kennon Sheldon and Tim Kasser found that people who pursue goals aligned with their values experience greater well-being and lower rates of depression. When your actions reflect what truly matters to you—not what someone else told you should matter—you foster a sense of autonomy, competence, and connection. You feel like you’re living your life, not performing someone else’s version of it.

But when there’s a disconnect? When your values and your actions don’t line up? That creates internal conflict. Stress. A reduced sense of personal accomplishment. You can be successful by every external measure—the title, the salary, the recognition—and still feel empty because you’re living someone else’s version of success.

Kasser and his colleague Richard Ryan also found that people who chase external markers like money, status, and recognition experience lower levels of happiness and life satisfaction. Meanwhile, those who prioritize intrinsic values—personal growth, relationships, community—report higher levels of well-being.

External success isn’t bad. But it can’t be the foundation of how you define yourself. Because when it shifts—and it will—you need to know who you are without it.

The Shift: From Titles to Characteristics

Here’s the reframe:

Instead of asking, “What do I do?” start asking: “Who am I?”

Instead of defining yourself by your job title, define yourself by the characteristics that show what you value.

Maybe you’re someone who values integrity. Who shows up for people. Who asks hard questions. Who creates space for others to grow. Who leads with empathy. Who refuses to compromise on what matters.

Those things don’t change when you switch jobs. They don’t disappear when you leave a company or step away from a role. They’re yours. They’re who you are.

I see this shift happen when leaders stop performing the role they’ve been given and start paying attention to how they want to show up. They realize they value creativity, connection, and autonomy. They realize they’re someone who asks good questions and makes people feel heard. They realize the version of themselves they’ve been performing at work isn’t the version they want to be.

And once they start building a life around those values—not around a title someone else gave them—everything shifts.

They don’t need external validation anymore. They know who they are. And the life they build starts to look like them.

Ascend and Balance Your True Self

This is what we mean when we talk about Ascend and Balance at Asbatra Coaching.

You’re not ascending to some version of yourself that someone else defined as successful. You’re not climbing toward a title or a promotion or external validation.

You’re ascending to your true self. The one that exists underneath the roles and expectations you’ve been carrying. The one that knows what matters.

And balance doesn’t mean juggling everyone else’s demands. It doesn’t mean saying “yes” to everything and hoping you can hold it all together.

Balance means knowing what you value, and building your life around that - even when it looks different from what you thought success was supposed to be. Even when it means disappointing people who expected you to keep performing the old role.

You can’t leave behind what doesn’t serve you if you don’t know who you are without it. You can’t navigate the messy middle if you’re still trying to be the person you think you should be. You can’t protect your boundaries or make resting non-negotiable if you believe your worth is tied to how hard you work and what titles you hold.

You have to know yourself. Not the version that looks good on paper. The version that’s grounded in your values. The one that exists when no one’s watching.

The Questions That Matter

So here’s what I want you to sit with:

• If you couldn’t introduce yourself with a job title, how would you describe who you are?

• What are the characteristics you want to be known for—not in your career, but as a person?

• What values are non-negotiable for you, and how are you living them right now?

• What would your life look like if you built it around being yourself instead of aiming for someone else’s version of success?

These aren’t easy questions, but they’re the ones that matter. Because the titles will change. The roles will shift. The external markers of success will come and go.

But who you are—when you’re grounded in your values—that’s yours. That’s what you get to keep.

You Don’t Have to Figure This Out Alone

If you’re in that messy middle right now—if you’ve lost the titles or the roles or the identity you thought defined you—you’re not broken. You’re becoming.

And becoming requires space. Community. Guidance.

That’s why we created the Recalibration Retreat: five days in Costa Rica to step away from the noise and reconnect with who you actually are. Not who you think you should be. Not the version of you that’s been performing for twenty years. The real you.

October 24-29, 2026 | Verdesana, Costa Rica

Five days of nature, movement, and guided coaching to help you build a life around your true self—not someone else’s definition of success.

By the time you leave, you’ll have:

• One boundary you’ve practiced setting

• One decision you’re ready to make

• A community that continues beyond the retreat

Early enrollment by March 20, 2026
Applications close: August 2026

Dr. Jessica Herbert is the founder of Asbatra Coaching, where she works with high-performing professionals and teams navigating transitions. Through 1:1 coaching, small team programs, retreats, and workshops, she helps leaders build lives aligned with their values and redefine success on their own terms. Learn more at www.asbatra.com, www.asbatra-retreats.org, or visit www.drjessicaherbert.com.

Listen to the full audio version of this blog on the Asbatra podcast. If you’re a leader navigating organizational change and want support defining your legacy, book a transformation call to explore what’s possible.

Or join us for the Recalibration Retreat (October 24-29, 2026, in Costa Rica)—five days to step back, recalibrate, and design the leadership legacy you want to leave. Learn more here.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

I spent twelve years avoiding introducing myself when meeting others.

Everyone expected the same: name followed by what I did. In the first part of my career, I was a law enforcement officer. Not everyone wanted to hear this and it often turned conversations into awkward moments.

When I left that role, people would ask what I did now, and I’d freeze. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I realized I hadn’t figured out a way to define my sense of self as a title on a business card.

If you’re in the middle of a career transition—or even just considering one—you might be feeling this too. That strange vertigo that comes when the story you’ve been telling about yourself for years suddenly doesn’t fit anymore.

The Research Behind the Identity Crisis

Dr. Maya Shankar, cognitive scientist and former White House advisor, talks about this phenomenon in her work on identity change. She calls it “identity foreclosure”—when we commit to an identity so completely that we lose sight of the other possibilities we contain.

Shankar’s research shows that major life transitions force what she calls “necessary reconstructions” of self. The discomfort isn’t a sign you’ve made a wrong turn. It’s evidence that you’re outgrowing a container that no longer fits.

Brené Brown writes about this in Atlas of the Heart, noting that belonging to ourselves often requires disappointing others. When you’ve built an identity around external validation—promotions, performance reviews, being the person who always says yes—stepping away from that feels like betrayal.

What I See in Clients (And What I Lived Myself)

A client I worked with last year—I’ll call her Jennifer—had been a senior attorney for 15 years. She was good at it. She was also exhausted by it. When she finally made the decision to pivot into consulting, she told me the hardest part wasn’t the logistics. It was the silence that followed when people asked what she did, and she didn’t have a clear, impressive answer ready.

“I felt like I was letting everyone down by not being that person anymore,” she said. “Even though that person was miserable.”

I get it. When I transitioned out of public safety, I ensured my imprint on social media or networking platforms stayed dark for months. I didn’t know how to explain what I did and how that made sense for what I did next. And the public safety field was quick to reject me because I left that role. This rejection was complicated, and I didn’t know how to handle it.

But here’s what I’ve learned, both personally and through working with people in similar positions: the discomfort of not knowing who you are in transition is the most honest place you can be.

The Space Between Stories

Studies on career transitions show that people who embrace the ambiguity of the “in-between” period report higher satisfaction in their new roles than those who rush to fill the gap with the first available option. They focus on the why and what ignites their inner soul. This gives clarity on what they are looking for next – which isn’t a title, or a breakdown of your 401k.

The reality is that your brain seeks to attach to what is known and explainable – something hard to do when in transition. You may often find yourself looking for the known – the same type of job – or creating excuses to hold on to the known during transitions – “It will get better after this part is over in a week.”

That isn’t embracing the ambiguity, that is trying to attach to the known. And your comfort zone won’t be the place you grow - it will be the place you will be faced with the same lesson again and again.

What This Means for You

If you’re in this space right now—between the identity that no longer fits and one that hasn’t fully formed yet—I want you to know: you’re not behind. You’re not unprepared. You’re in the most creative, generative phase of change, even if it doesn’t feel that way.

The pressure to have it figured out is intense at this stage of life. We’re supposed to be established. We’re supposed to know ourselves by now.

But what if the invitation here isn’t to know, but to discover? What if the goal isn’t to rebuild the same structure with different materials, but to ask what you want to build?

A Question to Sit With

When you strip away the titles, the roles, the things you’ve accomplished—what remains?

Not what you think should remain. Not what would impress someone. What feels true when you’re quiet enough to hear it?

If this reflection stirred something in you, I’d love to hear about it. Drop a comment below:

Leave a comment

…or if you’re ready for a deeper conversation about your transition, book a call here. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is stop trying to figure it out alone.

Subscribe now

The first things I schedule every January aren’t client calls or project deadlines.

They’re my restore and recharge weekends. And my workouts.

In December as we await the new year, I look back to that notebook of annual accomplishments and what I’m leaving behind—I open my calendar for the new year and block out time.

Six weekends spread across the twelve months where I disappear. No work. No obligations. Just space to reset.

Then I schedule my workouts. Lymphatic exercises and mobility work every morning. Yoga three times a week. Strength training twice a week. Meditation before I start the day.

People think I do this because I’m disciplined. Or because I’m one of those wellness people who loves routines.

That’s not it.

I do this because without movement, nothing else is possible.

The Thing That Makes Everything Else Work

If I don’t keep mobile—if I skip the stretching, the strength training, the work that keeps my body functioning—I can’t do the things I value most.

I can’t hike the mountains and landscapes of the southwest. I can’t swim the oceans in Costa Rica. I can’t kayak the bays of California or endure the walking and public transportation systems that define travel in Europe and Latin America. People walk so much more than you’d think when you’re navigating a city that wasn’t built for cars.

And it’s not just about travel.

If I’m not moving my body, I can’t think clearly. I can’t lead effectively. I can’t show up for the work that matters or the people who need me.

Sitting behind a computer dulls my brain…and it may be dulling yours.

Research backs this up. Studies on physical activity and cognitive function show that exercise doesn’t just improve your physical health—it enhances your ability to think, focus, and solve problems. Regular movement increases blood flow to the brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive function. It triggers the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a protein that supports learning and memory. It reduces anxiety and depression, improves mood, and helps you manage stress.

In other words, movement isn’t optional. It’s foundational.

But knowing the research and actually living it are two different things. I learned this the hard way.

What Happened When I Stopped Treating It Like Optional

Here’s what I learned as I stepped into different leadership positions, in which I was leading teams, managing competing demands from peers and team members, sitting in strategy meetings where everyone wanted something different - and I was in the middle, trying to synthesize it all into decisions that mattered.

The pressure was constant. The demands were real. And I needed methods to release the stress, to recenter my focus, to clear my thinking so I could lead effectively.

Movement did that. Workouts. Meditation. The sweating out of daily stress in a hot yoga room was as important as any strategic reflection I did at my desk.

I worked with a woman named Nicole who told me something that changed how I thought about all of this: “If I don’t go to spin class, everyone suffers.”

That landed.

Because I realized the same thing was true for me. If I didn’t have my time at Bikram yoga—with a Marine staff sergeant yelling at me at 5 AM to breathe, stretch, and hold—everyone was going to suffer. My team. My peers. The decisions I had to make.

It wasn’t about deserving rest or earning the right to take care of myself. It was about recognizing that when I didn’t move my body, when I didn’t release the stress, when I didn’t give myself space to reset—I couldn’t show up the way my role required.

I couldn’t think clearly in strategy meetings. I couldn’t hold space for my team’s needs without getting reactive. I couldn’t make the kind of decisions that required calm, focused thinking.

Movement wasn’t self-care in the soft, optional sense. It was operational. It was the thing that made me functional.

Why Scheduling Wellness Like a Meeting Actually Works

There’s research on this too. Studies show that when people block out specific time in their calendars for self-care activities and treat them as non-negotiable appointments, they’re significantly more likely to follow through.

It sounds obvious. But most of us don’t do it.

We tell ourselves we’ll rest when we have time. We’ll work out when things calm down. We’ll take care of ourselves after we finish this project, close this deal, get through this busy season.

But there’s always another project. Another deadline. Another reason to put it off.

The people who sustain themselves through transitions, through high-pressure roles, through the chaos of change—they’re not the ones who wait for permission to take care of themselves.

They’re the ones who schedule it first.

How to Actually Make This Work

Here’s what I do, and what I recommend to the leaders I work with:

Schedule it in December for the entire year.

Don’t wait until you’re burned out to think about when you’ll recharge. Open your calendar on the last Sunday of December. Block out your restore and recharge weekends now. Put them in six months apart. Mark them as busy. Don’t negotiate with them.

Put workouts on your calendar like meetings.

Not in a to-do list. Not as a reminder. As an actual calendar block with a start time and an end time. If someone asks for that time, you say no. You wouldn’t cancel a board meeting because someone wanted coffee. Don’t cancel your workout either.

Make it specific, not aspirational.

Don’t write “exercise” and hope you figure it out later. Write “30-minute yoga,” “strength training—legs,” “mobility work + meditation.” When it’s vague, it’s easier to skip. When it’s specific, you know exactly what you’re showing up for.

Tie it to something you value.

This is the piece people miss. Your wellness isn’t about looking a certain way or hitting some arbitrary fitness goal. It’s about making everything else you care about possible. For me, it’s about being able to travel the way I want to travel. To think clearly enough to do work that matters. To have the energy to show up for the people I love. When you connect your wellness to something that actually matters to you, it stops feeling like one more thing on your list and starts feeling like the foundation.

Protect the first hour of your day.

Working with clients in different timezones can make this hard – they know who they are when they get me at 6 or 7 am. But I limit that to one day a week – because my other days, that first hour is mine. Lymphatic exercises. Mobility work. Meditation. Movement before I open my email, before I respond to anyone else’s needs. Because once the day starts, it’s theirs. That first hour has to be mine.

Build in accountability.

Tell someone what you’re doing. Put your workouts on a shared calendar if you live with a partner or family. Join a class where people notice if you’re not there. Hire a trainer. Book a retreat. Make it harder to skip by building in external accountability until the internal motivation catches up.

The Boundary You’re Actually Protecting

Here’s what I realized after I started doing this.

Scheduling wellness first isn’t about being selfish. It’s not about putting yourself ahead of your responsibilities.

It’s about recognizing that you can’t give what you don’t have.

At the start of this year, I asked you to reflect on what you accomplished in 2025 and what you’re leaving behind. If you know you are seeking change, we dove into the messy middle—the impatience and discomfort that comes when you’re stuck between clarity and action.

This is the piece that makes those other two possible.

You can’t navigate the chaos of leadership if your body and mind are running on empty. You can’t build the life you’re trying to manifest if you’re too exhausted to think straight. You can’t hold space for your team’s competing needs if you haven’t given yourself space to reset.

Rest and movement aren’t rewards for working hard enough. They’re the things that make the work possible.

So here’s what I want to know from you.

What’s the first thing you schedule on your calendar each year? Is it work? Family obligations? Other people’s needs?

And what would change if you scheduled your wellness first?

Not as a someday goal. Not as something you’ll get to when life calms down. But as the non-negotiable foundation that makes everything else work.

Share it in the comments. One thing you’re committing to schedule first this year. One boundary you’re protecting because you know it makes everything else possible.

Because you can’t pour from an empty cup. And you can’t lead, create, or show up for the people who need you if you’re running on fumes.

Your wellness isn’t selfish. It’s the strategy that makes everything else work.

Leave a comment

Looking for structured support to make wellness non-negotiable? The Recalibration Retreat (October 24-29, 2026 in Costa Rica) builds rest, movement, and recalibration into five intentional days. Daily yoga, guided walks, massage, hot springs, and coaching designed to help you reshape your container. Early enrollment by March 20, 2026 sets your intention of the year. Book your spot here.

Subscribe now

I don't check bags when I fly.

Not because I travel light or pack efficiently—though I’ve gotten good at both. I don’t check bags because I can’t stand the wait. Circling the baggage claim carousel while everyone else shuffles forward, checking their phones, resigned to the delay. I’d rather cram everything into a carry-on and walk straight to the car.

I preorder my groceries. Not for convenience, though that’s the excuse I give. I do it because I can’t navigate the aisles behind someone staring at cereal boxes for five minutes, paralyzed by seventeen variations of the same brand.

I don’t drive during rush hour if I can help it. I’ll leave early or late, rearrange my entire schedule, just to avoid sitting in traffic watching brake lights flicker on and off.

I’m not patient. And when I was transitioning careers—leaving law enforcement, building something new, trying to figure out who I was becoming—I was absolutely unbearable.

I wanted the change to happen already. I’d made the decision. I knew where I was going.

Why was it taking so long to get there?

Everyone around me probably wanted to shake me. Or avoid me entirely.

The Emotions We Don’t Talk About

Here’s what no one tells you about change: the decision is the easy part.

Deciding to leave. Deciding to start. Deciding to become someone different. That moment of clarity feels like momentum. Like you’re already moving.

But then you hit the messy middle.

The space between who you were and who you’re becoming. And it turns out that space is full of feelings you didn’t sign up for.

Brené Brown has spent decades researching vulnerability, and she’s clear about what happens when we face uncertainty: we armor up. We try to control what we can’t control. We either overfunction—doing everything, fixing everything, trying to force the transition to move faster—or we underfunction, retreating into paralysis because we can’t see the path forward.

Both are forms of protection. Both are ways of getting out from underneath fear and uncertainty.

I was an overfunctioner. Classic. I couldn’t just let the transition unfold. I had to manage it, direct it, speed it up. If I wasn’t in motion, I felt like I was failing.

But what I didn’t realize then—what I’m only now learning to name—is that anxiety isn’t the problem. Anxiety is information.

Brown defines anxiety as the emotion we experience when we’re facing uncertainty and we don’t have all the data we need to respond. It’s not weakness. It’s not failure. It’s your system trying to tell you something:

You’re in unfamiliar territory. Slow down. Pay attention.

The problem isn’t the anxiety. The problem is what we do with it.

What If the Messy Middle Is the Point?

Cognitive scientist Maya Shankar spent years studying change. Not because she was curious about it in the abstract, but because her life forced her to understand it.

At fifteen, she was a concert violinist training at Juilliard under Itzhak Perlman. Her entire identity was wrapped up in music. And then a hand injury ended her career in a single moment.

She talks about what happened next as identity paralysis. Who you are is suddenly called into question. You don’t have the courage to imagine what a future could look like. You’re stuck between the person you were and the person you might become, and the space in between feels unbearable.

But here’s what Shankar discovered through her research and her own experience: the messy middle isn’t just something to endure. It’s where transformation actually happens.

When a big change happens to us, it creates unique stresses and demands. And those stresses don’t just test us—they can reveal capacities we didn’t know we had.

New perspectives. New values. New ways of being.

The question isn’t whether you’ll feel stuck, lost, or overwhelmed in the middle of transition. You will. The question is whether you’ll see that discomfort as a signal to retreat or as an invitation to discover what’s possible on the other side.

The Year(s) I Drove Everyone Crazy

I have transitioned several times over the years: jobs, roles, industries, cities. The decision to change was clear to me and I didn’t always mind the chaos that happened after – packing up a house, changing cities, getting lost to and from the grocery store.

But the reality was there were times that I questioned the decision – what if this doesn’t work? What would that look like and would I know?

So I tried to fill the gap with action. I started projects. I took on clients. I built systems. I told myself I was making progress. Really, I was just trying not to feel the discomfort of not knowing.

My impatience wasn’t about efficiency. It was about control. If I could keep moving, keep doing, keep producing, I didn’t have to sit with the fact that I was in this murky middle.

The people around me felt it. My colleagues. The friends who gently suggested I slow down, take a breath, give myself time.

But I couldn’t hear them. Because slowing down meant feeling. And feeling meant acknowledging that I didn’t have it figured out.

It took me longer than it should have to realize that the messy middle wasn’t a problem to solve. It was a process to move through. And the only way through was to stop trying to speed it up. But don’t worry…the universe shows you these lessons more than once when you don’t learn them (more on that later).

What the Messy Middle Teaches You

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then.

The anxiety you feel in transition isn’t telling you you’re doing it wrong. It’s telling you you’re in unfamiliar territory and you don’t have all the information yet. That’s not a deficiency. That’s just reality.

The impatience you feel isn’t about wanting to be better or faster. It’s about not wanting to feel vulnerable. Because vulnerability—uncertainty, risk, emotional exposure—is what change requires. And we’re conditioned to see vulnerability as weakness.

But Shankar’s research shows something different. The people who navigate change well aren’t the ones who avoid discomfort. They’re the ones who sit with it long enough to let it teach them something.

They discover new capacities. They uncover values they didn’t know mattered. They build a version of themselves they couldn’t have planned for.

But none of that happens if you’re trying to rush through the messy middle.

I still don’t like waiting at baggage claim. I still preorder my groceries. I still avoid traffic when I can.

But when it comes to the transitions that matter—the ones that reshape who you are—I’m learning to stop trying to control the pace.

Because the messy middle isn’t the part you get through on your way to the good stuff. It is the good stuff. It’s where you figure out who you’re becoming.

Here’s what I want to know from you.

Where are you right now in the messy middle?

Are you stuck between the decision you made and the clarity you’re still waiting for? Are you overfunctioning—trying to manage, control, and speed up the process? Or are you paralyzed, unable to see the next step?

And what would it look like to stop trying to rush through it? To let the discomfort teach you something instead of just trying to make it stop?

Name it in the comments. One sentence. Where you are. What you’re feeling.

Because the messy middle is lonely when you think you’re the only one in it. But you’re not. And sometimes the most important thing is just knowing someone else understands.

Leave a comment

If you’re in the messy middle and you need more than words on a screen—if you need space, structure, and a community of leaders who get it—the Recalibration Retreat is for you.

October 24-29, 2026, at Verdesana in Costa Rica. Five days where you stop performing and start reclaiming. Where nature, movement, and guided coaching help you find what’s been buried beneath the chaos.

This isn’t about adding more to your plate. It’s about recalibration—realigning with what actually matters, reshaping your container to hold what serves you.

You’ll leave with one boundary you’ve practiced, one decision you’re ready to make, and a community that continues beyond the retreat.

Early enrollment (by March 20, 2026) gets you locked in for the year. Register now.

Learn more and apply here. Because the thing that drives you to be your best—it’s not gone. It’s just buried in the messy middle. And recalibration is how you find it again.

Subscribe now

Intention doesn’t come from wanting more. It comes from knowing what to let go of.

Every fall, I sit down with a blank notebook and do something that most people skip. I write down what happened this year—not the goals I set last January, but what actually occurred. The promotion I earned and the project I turned down. The acknowledgements or rewards, the things I stopped doing because they weren’t working. The client whose life shifted and the afternoon when I gave myself permission to rest.

Then I write down what I’m leaving behind.

The belief that got me here but won’t take me further. The pattern I’ve outgrown. The story I’ve been telling myself that’s no longer true.

This isn’t reflection for reflection’s sake. It’s how I live with intention.

The Eastern calendar marks this as the transition from the Year of the Snake to the Year of the Fire Horse. The Snake year asked us to shed old skins. The Fire Horse year invites momentum—not just movement, but movement with direction.

Most people I work with want to charge into the new year. They’re ready to set goals, create vision boards, commit to change. By the end of January, you are back into your old habits. You skipped the part where you looked back and named what you’re carrying forward, and discarded what needs to stay behind.

You can’t move with intention if you don’t know what you’re leaving behind.

Why Reflection Makes You a Better Leader

Here’s what changed how I approach year-end planning.

Researcher Cheryl Travers spent years studying what happens when leaders and professionals combine reflection with goal-setting. She worked with hundreds of managers across organizations—from software developers at Microsoft to safety teams at Leeds Teaching Hospital to quality assurance professionals navigating task backlogs. She had them keep reflective diaries while working on growth goals, then tracked what happened.

What she found matters for anyone leading through change.

The leaders who set goals directly tied to performance—things like improving team efficiency or reducing errors—did better. But here’s what was surprising: the leaders who set goals that seemed unrelated to their immediate work also improved their leadership effectiveness. Goals around managing stress, building confidence, creating boundaries, improving how they worked with others. These indirect goals had a measurable impact on their outcomes.

One group of software developers used Travers’ reflective goal-setting process. Eighty percent reported productive behavior changes that lasted beyond the program. Quality assurance teams reduced backlogs while improving morale. Hospital safety teams improved patient care. Managers reported better performance and stronger relationships with their teams.

The growth didn’t stop when the reflection ended. The combination of looking back and setting goals forward created something researchers call a recursive effect: each improvement built on the last, creating momentum that sustained itself.

For leaders navigating dysfunction and trying to rebuild culture, this matters.

You’re managing underperforming teams while proving your own value. You’re carrying the weight of organizational change while trying not to burn out. You’re expected to have all the answers while learning a new system, new people, new problems.

The leaders I work with who do this well aren’t the ones who set the most goals. They’re the ones who pause long enough to reflect on what they’ve learned, what’s working, and what needs to be released before they move forward. They understand that growth doesn’t come from adding more: it comes from knowing what to keep and what to let go.

Travers found that the act of reflection itself changes how you approach goals. When you take time to look back and name what you’ve experienced, you create clarity about what matters. And that clarity shapes better decisions going forward.

The Three Questions That Ground Intention

I ask myself three questions every fall. I ask my clients the same ones.

What did I accomplish this year?

Not the LinkedIn version. The real one. The times I showed up for myself. The decisions that felt small but weren’t. The moment I chose growth over comfort.

One leader I worked with last year couldn’t answer this at first. She’d spent twelve months in a role that demanded everything—early mornings, late nights, constant firefighting.

When I asked her to list her achievements, she said, “I survived.” And then she stopped.

It took us twenty minutes of sitting with that before she realized surviving was the achievement. She’d kept her team intact through a brutal reorganization. She’d protected her health enough to still be standing. She’d chosen not to sacrifice her relationship when the pressure mounted.

What lessons did I learn, and what do I need to let go of?

This is the Year of the Snake question. What belief, pattern, or story did you carry that needs to stay behind?

For me this year, it was the belief that rest is something you earn after you’ve done enough. I learned that rest isn’t a reward—it’s a requirement. And I had to let go of the guilt that came with it.

What do I want to manifest this year?

Not what you think you should want. What actually matters to you right now, in this season.

I use the Wheel of Life framework (leave a comment if you would like to receive a copy) —categories like relationships, health, career, personal growth, finances. But I adjust them every year based on what’s calling for attention. Some years, leadership development takes up more space. Other years, it’s rebuilding connection. This year, it’s about building capacity in others instead of always being the one solving problems.

I pick between five and eight categories to put on a large drawing page. I write down what I want to feel, experience, or create in each category. And then I let it guide me without letting it own me.

The Part We Skip (And Why It Matters)

2026 is the Year of the Fire Horse and is about momentum and fiery passion. But momentum doesn’t mean speed. It means moving with clarity about where you’ve been, and intention about where you’re going. You move forward with passion, courage and dynamic intention this year.

If you don’t take the time to name what you’re leaving behind, you end up dragging it with you.

The belief that you’re only valuable when you’re overworked. The pattern of saying yes when you mean no. The story that you’re behind, unprepared, not enough.

So before you set your goals for this year, sit with these questions:

• What did you accomplish in the past year—not just professionally, but personally?

• What moments mattered, even if no one else saw them?

• What lessons did you learn that changed how you see yourself, your work, or your life? And what belief or pattern are you ready to let go of so you can keep growing?

• What do you want to manifest this year? Not what you think you should want, but what actually matters to you right now, in this season of your life?

I want to hear from you.

In the comments below, share one thing you’re shedding from the Year of the Snake and one thing you’re manifesting in the Year of the Fire Horse. It doesn’t have to be profound. It just has to be true.

Leave a comment

Maybe you’re shedding the need to have all the answers. Maybe you’re manifesting more spaciousness in your schedule. Maybe you’re letting go of a leadership style that worked five years ago but doesn’t serve you now. Maybe you’re moving toward building a team that doesn’t need you to solve every problem.

Name it. Write it down. Make it real.

When you share what you’re leaving behind and what you’re moving toward, you give yourself permission to actually do it. And you give someone else reading this the courage to do the same.

And if this reflection feels heavy—or if you’re realizing you need support as you step into this transition—let’s talk. Sometimes the hardest part of change isn’t knowing what to do next. It’s giving yourself permission to let go of what’s been holding you back.

Book your transformation call here.

Subscribe now