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.
I Forget Sometimes That I Am Amazing
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Hello Reader, Welcome to the conversation. I forget sometimes that I am Ahh-Maze-Zing. There. I said it out loud. And I'm guessing I'm not the only one. We live in a world that is constantly offering us new metrics to measure ourselves against. Followers. Revenue. Title. The number on the scale. The square footage of the house. And somewhere in all that measuring, we lose track of something much more fundamental. Who we actually are. Not what we've built. Not what we've proven. Not what we've survived or achieved or accumulated. Who we are, underneath all of it, at the core. From My Chair to YoursA little over 2 years ago, I remember the feeling that I had somehow misplaced myself. That I had been so busy tracking and striving and performing that the truest version of me had gotten buried somewhere beneath the doing. It's a particular kind of exhaustion, that one. Not the kind that sleep fixes. Or a few drinks. Or a pill or a powder or a cookie. Or event a binge shopping trip. Not the kind that any of our favorite numbing strategies can touch. And I know what this sounds like. I can already hear the quiet resistance...oh, here she goes, telling me to think positive thoughts and everything will be fine. I want to name that, because it's fair. And because this is not that. This is not about optimism. It is not about reframing your circumstances or choosing to see the bright side. It is about something far more foundational than a mindset shift. I believe there is a soul at the center of each of us. And I believe, after everything I've read and observed and experienced, that the highest vibration available to us, across every framework of consciousness anyone has ever mapped, is love. It comes back to that. It always comes back to that. Just love one another. But here's what I've had to learn for myself, and what I think gets skipped over: that invitation begins with you. You are included in the "one another." Remembering that you are amazing is not an act of ego. It is an act of love. And you cannot genuinely pour that love outward from a place of self-forgetting. The LensIn my Depletion to Fulfillment model, one of the quietest and most dangerous moves happens not in crisis, but in ordinary time. It happens when we forget. When we're depleted, we often know it. We feel the weight of it. But there's a subtler layer underneath depletion that doesn't announce itself as loudly. It's the slow erosion of identity that happens when we let external measurements become the answer to an internal question. When we start looking outward to confirm something that can only be found within. I describe the movement from deflation into defeat as falling through a trapdoor while "carrying the anvil." The anvil is the weight we pick up when we attach ourselves to outcomes, to validation, to proof that we are enough. We don't always realize we've picked it up. We just notice, one day, that we feel heavy. This is not positive thinking. Positive thinking asks you to feel something different. This asks you to remember something true. Remembering that you are amazing is not a motivational exercise. It is a structural one. It is the act of returning to your foundation before the weight accumulates. It is choosing, deliberately and repeatedly, to answer the question of your worth from the inside out. That is not softness. That is the work. ReflectionWhat are five ways you know, for certain, that you are amazing? They don't have to be grand. You don't have to have climbed a mountain or broken a record. The quiet things count. Maybe more. You get out of bed every day and feed your cats. You feed yourself. You love your kids fiercely, even when it's hard. You show up for a cause that matters to you. You love your parents. You love you. Write them down. All five. And when you're done, sit with them for a minute before you move on to the next thing. You are allowed to know this about yourself. Because YOU ARE AMAZING! Until we see each other again, I hope you have a powerful day. -Joanna Joanna Douglas P.S. If this entry stirred something in you, I want to recommend The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown. |
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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