I am returning home from Santa Barbara after two glorious days attending LifeForward: Diving Deeper led by Pamela McLean, Co-founder and Chief Knowledge Officer at the Hudson Institute of Coaching, and I could not wait to write about it. When I arrived in Santa Barbara, I had a list of expectations and outcomes I wanted from the program.

For the last couple of years, I felt pressured to publish a memoir I had written. In combination with the book, I had also developed a business plan for a non-profit I want to launch. As I started my experience with Pam and LifeForward, I hoped to develop awareness of the barriers to getting both the book and the non-profit launched. I also expected to walk away with a clear action plan with timelines.

Through self-reflection and in small groups, we explored transitions, identified where we were on the Hudson Cycle of Renewal, and gained an understating of the habits we might keep, modify, or release. But what stayed with me was not what I hoped to gain from this experience. It wasn’t answers or expectations that stayed.

It was questions. 

#1 What if clarity begins with the life I am already living?

The experience came at exactly the right moment because I am currently “in between”. Pam describes this as a “liminal space.” She says there are only a few times in life when we find ourselves there in a big way. Yet, as I reflected on my own life, I realized I’ve been here a number of times before.

Liminal space is being in the “messy middle”, when everything feels unclear, unsettled, and uncertain. Pam reminded me that this is where we can tap into tremendous creativity. It’s a space ripe for disruption, possibility, and profound change. Pam says that when we are here, “we can widen our lens and confront impermanence.” Pam helped us see that these moments are extraordinary invitations. If we are fully awake and present, we can see things we might otherwise miss.

Being awake invites us to examine the stories we’ve been telling ourselves, often unconscious and sometimes even for decades. Sometimes we wander through life with an unconscious operating system that drives repetitive patterns that no longer serve us. For me, that operating system was built around a story I’d carried for most of my life and had started when I was very young. It included narratives that I wasn’t good enough or smart enough and believing there would never be enough.

My story fueled more than thirty years of hyper-achieving and often from a place where I felt an extreme sense of urgency. I was constantly trying to prove something. Diving Deeper allowed me to challenge this operating system. I found myself asking a deceptively simple question: 

#2 What exactly am I trying to prove, and more importantly, to whom?

I realized suddenly that there were no answers. In fact, this  left me with more questions. I began to see a pattern more clearly I had been living inside for decades. My need to prove myself by achievement had influenced many of my choices. Seeing that pattern does not mean I have stepped outside it. It means I can start asking: 

#3 What if I had nothing to prove?

For most of my adult life, work has been a large part of my identity. I am proud of the career I have built, and I still love meaningful, challenging work. I am beginning to question the cost of allowing what I do to define who I am. I am not trying to become a less ambitious person. I am trying to understand what ambition looks like when it no longer requires proving my worth.

There is nothing wrong with ambition and achievement. I’m incredibly proud of my accomplishments including the big risks I’ve taken and the life I’ve built. I’m simply beginning to recognize the difference between pursuing something because it genuinely calls to me and pursuing it because my achievements have become who I believe I am. If achievements become a core part of our identity, there will never be enough. For much of my life, those motivations were intertwined. I was always chasing the next promotion, the next level of pay, the next client, the next program, the next certification, or the next business to launch. 

#4 What is possible if I no longer need to prove my worth?

The messy middle is an opportunity to challenge old narratives and assumptions. It leaves us with the power of choice; the choice to either to speed by the messy middle or continue forward on the path we’ve always followed.

Alternatively, we can choose to simply “stay”.

Pam invites us to “stay a little longer.” It can feel uncomfortable. To avoid discomfort, we feel the urge to rush through it, find an answer, or move on to the next thing. Discomfort itself is a disruptor.

#5 What if discomfort is precisely where the transformation begins?

I thought I was coming into these two days with Pam to figure out what was blocking me from publishing my book and launching my non-profit. I expected to leave with clarity, a plan, and perhaps a few bold next steps. Instead, I discovered that what I needed was the opposite. I discovered answers and action plans were not what I needed. 

#6 What if  questions ARE my answers?

Pam taught us there are big leaps we can make during transitions, like writing a book or launching a new business. And there are smaller, incremental steps, like setting a boundary, making time for a walk, or creating a new daily practice. I realized that I have spent the last thirty years making big leaps. I’m a big leaper.

I sat down and wrote all of my achievements and big leaps over the last 30 years during a reflection exercise. The list was shocking and impressive. Truthfully, it was exhausting just to look at it. The real question became:

#7 What if my next big leap is recognizing I AM enough?

I looked up the definition of incremental: “happening or increasing gradually through a series of small, steady, and measurable steps or amounts rather than all at once.” It was such a simple concept, and yet it felt almost foreign to me. I realized that many of my big leaps had included several other big leaps, all happening simultaneously. Each became another achievement and another opportunity to prove something. I am proud of the work, the big, bold risks I’ve taken, and the life I have built. Ambition has given me opportunities, purpose, and experiences I would never trade. 

Ambition gave me the courage to have a child on my own and move across the country in the 1990s, leaving behind a culture in Texas, where I was told women should be submissive and where I was judged for being a single mother. My ambition gave me the courage to challenge those expectations and create a life on my own terms. Ambition brought me to breaking glass ceilings when I was often the only woman in the room whether in boardrooms or on executive teams. It gave me to courage to ask for a 30% raise when I was only 28 years old earning less than my male peers. 

I’m proud of that ambition. It has served me extraordinarily well. I’m not looking to abandon it. I’m learning to recognize the difference between ambition driven by possibility and purpose, and ambition driven by a need to prove my worth. I am learning to separate the joy of pursuing something meaningful from the pressure to achieve so I can feel worthy. Those motivations have often been intertwined. The pressure I put on myself came at costs with the biggest price tags on the people I love.

One way I recognize that cost is in how little room I have left for ordinary moments. I can be physically present with people I love while my mind is already on the next commitment, the next idea, the next client, or the next big thing I should be doing. I do not want the people who matter most to get only what is left of my attention.

When I started the experience of Diving Deeper, I was focused on big leaps. When I finished the two days with Pam, I landed on one incremental step: to create space. Creating space doesn’t mean chasing after another big goal or building another ambitious plan. I didn’t walk away with plans, timelines and deadlines, answers, or specific next steps. The only action was to simply create space. Interestingly, I’m aware that as I’m writing this, I am feeling the urge to turn “creating space” into one more project to manage, measure, and complete.

#8 What would it look like to just stay here for a moment?

The truth is that I have almost no margin in my life. I am beginning to see the cost of that more clearly. Making space may require me to tolerate the discomfort of not filling it and to resist treating rest and presence as achievements. It requires saying no to the next “once in a lifetime” client or project. 

When I create space, I can be fully present for what matters most:

• Being with my partner, traveling, and participating in activities we love.
• Taking more time to care for and be with my 86-year-old mom.
• Spending meaningful time with my adult children.
• Playing, laughing, and simply enjoying life with my cherished family and friends.
• Telling my story, without requiring that it become a published book.

I have spent the last year and a half carrying a sense of shame because I haven’t published my book. I had a story to tell, and somehow, not publishing it had become a measure of failure. I was in another familiar pattern of an internal sense of fictitious sense of urgency. “I must do this now, there has never been a more important time than now, and people need my story”. The truth is no one else can tell my story but me.

#9 Am I creating space by giving myself permission to NOT publish the book?

There may not be a deadline on publishing the book. There may not even need to be a published book. I am still learning to let that possibility be enough. I may or may not publish it. I can still tell my story, and perhaps I can live it every day by simply being who I am.

Writing my book has already given me something profound. It allowed me to revisit some of the most painful moments of my life and begin to see how those experiences have shaped me, which led me to a clear sense of authenticity and agency.

#10 What if the book has already served a purpose different from the one I originally imagined? 

Two days of Diving Deeper with Pam left me with one clear answer. The answers to these questions can only be found by staying in the messy middle and allowing it to remain messy.

Thank you, Pam!