Category: Pattern Work
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You Don’t Have One Problem, You Have FIVE
What looks like one problem is often hiding something deeper. Six weeks into his promotion, his boss scheduled a one-on-one. He walked in expecting to talk strategy. He walked out with a very different message. His team had been talking. They said he’d changed since the promotion. They didn’t trust his leadership. Some were questioning…
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Sydney! I can only change myself. How is this going to change my life??
How changing your life changes everyone else around you too “I can only change me.” I hear it almost every week. Sometimes it is accompanied by a shrug, other times it is said with a sigh of relief. Sometimes, I suspect it is said as a quiet reason not to begin. “Better known as resistance,”…
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The Losses Nobody Brings Casseroles For
On grief, change, and the difference between feeling it and falling back When someone dies, people know what to do. They bring casseroles. They send cards. They show up in dark clothes and hold your hand and say they’re so sorry. Nobody brings a casserole when the diagnosis comes back. Or when your youngest loads…
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Maybe You’re Not Afraid Of Change
You may be afraid of becoming the person who chose it She wanted out of the relationship. It was toxic. And I don’t mean toxic in a psychobabble, join-the-“toxic marriage” club kind of way. This relationship fit the definition. Constant fighting, competing, manipulation, accusations…all of it. But she didn’t leave. For the longest time, I…
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The Spirituality of Not Knowing
On suffering, certainty, and the things I no longer need to explain There is an enormous amount of spirituality organized around the following clichés: Everything happens for a reason. Trust the universe. What’s meant for you won’t miss you. Your thoughts create your reality. There are no accidents. You chose this before you arrived. Those…
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You Don’t Have to Choose Change
The strange freedom in knowing that change is coming anyway I had two conversations this week that were remarkably similar. One was with a physician. The other was with a founder whose company was in crisis. Different lives, different circumstances, but the same problem. Both felt trapped. They knew something needed to change, but every…
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Work Self vs. Caregiver Self
The disorienting shift from professional mastery to caring for an aging parent You can run a casualty drill at the hospital, restructure a division, create a performance improvement plan, or sit across from a board and defend a number down to the decimal. You can walk into a crisis meeting and be the calmest person…
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So I Changed the Situation. Why Is the Pattern Still Here?
Why awareness alone isn’t enough. So I Changed the Situation. Why Is the Pattern Still Here? People often contact me with issues around their relationship with money. Maybe they were raised in an environment of scarcity and don’t quite know how to develop a different relationship to earning, spending, saving, or simply having enough. They’ve…
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When the Truth Becomes Too Expensive
The hidden cost of maintaining a reality that is no longer true What happens to us when the truth, the unvarnished truth, becomes socially, professionally, relationally, or psychologically too expensive to tell? Justin was out on the golf course with some friends as one of his buddies shared the latest and greatest achievement his wife…
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The Dog Days of Disappointment
What my dogs taught me about resentment I’m a dog person and have been all my life. One of the things my dogs have taught me is that they carry expectations just like we do. Grab a leash or mention a walk and my dogs will jump, wag, yip in the happy expectation that we…