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.
FALL, FALL, FALL!!!
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Hello Reader, Welcome to the conversation. The only skiing lesson I ever had was from my cousin, in the parking lot, before we got on the lift. She taught me the snowplow. You see, you point your skis inward, you slow yourself down. That was it. That was the whole curriculum. I didn't ask any follow-up questions. It didn't occur to me to wonder whether there was more I should know. She said that was all I needed, so I got on the chairlift with her and rode it up. What nobody taught me was how to fall safely. I found myself pointed downhill on an actual slope in Ruidoso, New Mexico. You'd be right to think it was the the bunny hill with the tow rope and the other beginners. Nope, a real slope, with one tool, zero fall training, and absolutely no business being there. If Ace Ventura had ever tried to ski, it looked like a lot like that, racing past actual ski instructors who all screamed, fall, fall, FALL!!! You would also be right to guess that I was not appropriately dressed for skiing, which looking back was the least of my problems. I went up once. I came down once. and I was done. Life decision made on the spot: skiing is not for me. From My Chair to YoursWhat I didn't understand then was that falling was a skill. I hadn't thought to ask, and I had only ever framed falling of any kind as something to avoid. I've been thinking a lot lately about the things we resist that are actually trying to help us. Here's one you'll recognize. Nausea. That particular misery where your body is sending you a very clear message and you are doing everything in your power to not receive it. You breathe through it. You lie very still. You negotiate with it. And the whole time, the relief is right there waiting on the other side of the thing you're refusing to do. The resistance is the suffering. Not the thing itself. I've been in my own Messy Middle with my business for longer than I'd like to admit. And somewhere in a professional development class I'm currently taking, something finally cracked open. Dramatically. All at once. After a graceful question asked by an experienced coach. In that moment, I stopped white-knuckling something I'd been holding onto, and when I finally let it go, it wasn't the devastation I'd been bracing for. It was a release. The kind that makes you realize the suffering wasn't the fall. It was everything I did to avoid it. The instructors were right. They just couldn't teach me that while I was whizzing down the hill. The LensThe Messy Middle is the hill. You're not in denial anymore. You haven't quit. You're moving, which feels like progress, but moving and progressing are not the same thing. In the Messy Middle you are almost always in motion with whatever tools you have, which are usually not enough, heading somewhere you can't quite see yet. And the one thing that would actually help, the controlled release, the chosen fall, the letting go before the crash chooses it for you, is the thing nobody taught us to do. Most of us were handed a snowplow and told that was enough. Falling feels like failure. So we grip. We snowplow. We negotiate with the nausea. We white-knuckle the thing we should be releasing. And the longer we resist, the more the resistance costs us. Here's what I know now. The fall is not the end of the run. It is part of the skill set. And when you learn to fall well, when you stop framing it as something to avoid and start understanding it as something to know how to do, the hill stops being something that's happening to you. Falling on purpose is an act of trust. Trust that you will get up. Trust that the release is not the same as the defeat. Trust that the instructors screaming at you might actually know something you don't. Reflection
Until we see each other again, I hope you have a powerful day. -Joanna Joanna Douglas P.S. If you are enjoying our weekly conversations, would you mind forwarding this and inviting people in your sphere you think would benefit from these thoughts and shares? I appreciate you reading this far and for supporting this expanding body of work. They can sign up here for free. |
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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