I've spent years helping others navigate the gap between achievement and aliveness and right now, I'm navigating it myself. This newsletter is where that happens in real time: honest writing about the messy middle, the questions worth sitting with, and what it looks like to let life lead when certainty takes a leave of absence. If you're somewhere between who you were and who you're becoming, pull up a chair. Oh, yeah - I am an ICF Certified Coach, a Certified Enneagram Professional, focus on leadership development with a customized path to Emotional Intelligence through the wisdom of the Enneagram and I created the Depletion to Fulfillment framework.
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Hello Reader, Welcome to my newsletter! Thank you to all the beautiful people who sent positive thoughts or reached out to check on me over the past week. I appreciate how many people shared how my vulnerability helped them feel seen, and several shared they are also in a 'messy middle'. Well, friends, let's be in it together! I definitely see you, feel you and I'm happy to be doing life with YOU. From My Chair to YoursI think about this line more than I probably should. Not because of dating. Because of everything else. The business I've been building. The next level I can almost see. The version of what I'm creating that feels close enough to touch some days and completely out of reach on others. There's a specific feeling that comes when you've been showing up faithfully, doing the work, believing in the work, investing in the work, and the breakthrough hasn't arrived yet. It's not quite burnout. It's not despair. It's deflation. The quiet exhale when effort meets silence. When the gap between where you are and where you expected to be by now becomes too visible to look away from. Maybe you know this feeling too. Maybe it looks like a promotion that should have been yours by now. A raise you've earned but haven't been offered. A calling you've been answering for years without the sense of arrival you imagined. A version of success, or peace, or recognition, or purpose, that keeps living just around the next corner. Charlotte wasn't weak in that moment. She was honest. And I think there's something worth sitting with in that honesty. The LensIn my work I talk about deflation as its own distinct stage in the Depletion Loop within the Depletion to Fulfillment model. Deflation is different from depletion, different from doubt. Depletion is the exhaustion of over giving. Deflation is something quieter. It's the feeling that arrives when expectation and reality don't match, and you're left holding the distance between them. The instinct in that moment is usually to push harder, explain the silence away, or quietly wonder if you've been fooling yourself all along. But I've come to believe that deflation, as uncomfortable as it is, is often a sign of something important: you cared enough to be disappointed. You tried enough to feel the gap. You can't be deflated by something you were never really invested in. So before you decide what the silence means, before you rewrite the story of where you're headed, it may be worth pausing here for just a moment. Not to fix it. Just to acknowledge it honestly. The way Charlotte did. ReflectionIf you find yourself in a moment of deflation this week, you might sit quietly with a few questions:
In it with you, You. -Joanna Joanna Douglas P.S. If you know someone who would benefit from this information, forward it along. They can join us here. |
Joanna Douglas
I've spent years helping others navigate the gap between achievement and aliveness and right now, I'm navigating it myself. This newsletter is where that happens in real time: honest writing about the messy middle, the questions worth sitting with, and what it looks like to let life lead when certainty takes a leave of absence. If you're somewhere between who you were and who you're becoming, pull up a chair. Oh, yeah - I am an ICF Certified Coach, a Certified Enneagram Professional, focus on leadership development with a customized path to Emotional Intelligence through the wisdom of the Enneagram and I created the Depletion to Fulfillment framework.
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