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.
Sometimes you're the bug
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Hello Reader, Welcome to the conversation. The band Dire Straits has a song called "The Bug," later covered by Mary Chapin Carpenter, built on an image most of us understand without explanation. Some days you're the windshield, moving fast, and whatever you hit barely registers. Other days you're the thing that gets flattened. For most of my life, I believed I could stay the windshield if I worked hard enough at it. Staying in control, appearing powerful, keeping the upper hand. It kept a lot of things from touching me. I didn't notice until much later that it also kept me from feeling what I needed to feel, and from seeing what I was hitting along the way. The moment that changed it wasn't a crash. It was a conversation. From My Chair to YoursIn case you're new here, I am a coach that uses the Enneagram as one of the tools in my kit to support people on a growth trajectory. I've observed over the years that a lot of people take an Enneagram assessment, learn their number, and go on about their lives. That was me for years, and I was mistyped the whole time. I used my type to describe myself, and mostly to explain away behavior I didn't want to look at too closely. Eventually I hired an Enneagram coach. In our first session I said something, and she stopped me. She reflected back not only my words but how I was saying them, and suggested I might be a different type. It was the type I least wanted to be. The 'correct' type usually is. Something in me recognized it right away. I resisted it anyway, for several sessions, while I tried on every other explanation I could find. The type I'd claimed had let me avoid what actually needed my attention: how anger moved through me without my noticing, and the impact that had on the people around me. Being typed correctly, down to my subtype, took away the label I'd been hiding behind. 'This is just how I am' stopped working as an answer. Once I owned it, I found the courage to go inward and start observing my behavior instead of excusing it. It was uncomfortable, and some days it still is. It's also where the real work began. Once someone wants more than their number, I see two paths. The first is remedy: you know your type, something specific is happening, and you want support with it. The second is transformational, the lifelong depth work of watching your patterns up close and letting that change you. That's where the real work happened for me, and it's why I'm beginning to describe myself as a guide for people who sense there's more available to them. I know what it's like to sense it and not yet be ready to look. The LensMost of us move between the windshield and the bug more often than we admit. In the Messy Middle, it can happen within a single week: a meeting that goes your way on Monday, a plan that falls apart by Thursday. Getting knocked around isn't the part that shapes us. What shapes us is what happens right after impact, in the moment before we decide what it means. Deflation can slip in there looking like acceptance. Defeat can follow if we hold tightly to how things were supposed to go. What the Enneagram gave me (and gives anyone ready to take a look) was a look at motivation rather than behavior. It showed me why I'd built my life around staying the windshield. Control kept me from being affected, and being affected was the thing I most needed to allow. That's the piece underneath everything I do in Depletion to Fulfillment. Seeing the motivation is what makes the next direction visible. Depth work asks us to take the bug's position on purpose for a while, long enough to feel what we've been deflecting. For me, that discomfort hasn't fully gone away. I've come to think of it as part of being a student of myself, and I don't expect to graduate. Reflection
Until we see each other again, I hope you have a powerful day. -Joanna Joanna Douglas P.S. If you're ready to explore what it means to be the bug instead of staying protected by the windshield, that's what a Core Lens session is for. |
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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