What does it take to really make change?

My work is a study on change. What triggers it, how we respond, and what our actions say about us.

One thing I’ve learned over years of talking to corporate leaders about their paths is this: real change happens in arcs, not moments.

The thing is, we can’t always recognize the arc until after the journey.

Take this example:

A client of mine – an exceptionally bright woman, successful by any standard today – toiled for years in strenuous jobs with misogynistic bosses. She had a pattern (cultivated since childhood) of being attracted to dysfunctional cultures, and this played out in her personal life too, through a series of abusive relationships.

She found, as she neared thirty, that she had achieved some of what she wanted (a promising career trajectory) but it came at a great price: her self-worth. And, the other things she hoped for (lifestyle, family, balance) felt beyond her reach.

She was stuck. She stayed in this state for a while longer, even after she saw it.

And yet, as we were speaking, she was ten years beyond this, a healthy family, a second child on the way, and the CEO of a heavily funded tech start-up.

 So I asked: How did you get from there to here? What changed?

She said to me: “I remember the exact moment it changed. I was having breakfast in New York with my boyfriend, describing a difficult situation at work, and he chose then to admit he’d been cheating. I broke up with him on the spot and I remember leaving that restaurant thinking, it’s time for change.”

But, she explained, the change didn’t actually happen then. That was just the moment she decided on it. 

What followed was a long series of small steps, some big leaps of faith, and years of hard work that set her in the right direction. With each step she took, her self-confidence and self-worth grew.  

Her journey forward featured a lot of surprises, some more setbacks, and even more wins.

It would be years from that moment before she would wake up, look around herself, and say “I’m getting to where I was meant to be.”

After that conversation, I start to see this pattern everywhere.

Our biggest changes may start with a moment of realization, but they can take years to unfold. And even when we know what we want, there will be bumps along the road that make us doubt ourselves, lose focus, or feel discouraged about our progress.

And then recently, I noticed something else.

Maybe that initial moment sometimes isn’t the one we thought it was. Maybe it was just the beginning of getting to where we are going.

Here's how it looked for me:

4 years ago, I decided to leave my corporate job and strike out on my own. It took me a few more months to make the move. And just 3 days after that to start my consulting business.

I thought that this was “my moment.”

But now, four years later, I’ve been through so much more. I moved from DC to Vermont – a massive lifestyle change after 19 years in the city. And COVID struck weeks after I launched. Homeschooling, juggling client work, everything else that involved.

My mother passed in 2022 after a terribly long illness. It sent me off into a year-long odyssey of trying to understand my complex feelings about that experience, to process grief related to the loss of her and my father, and deeply buried childhood pain.

I worked up to a sabbatical, which took me 6 months to prepare for and which I almost cancelled about 60 times before it started – out of fear, and lifelong habits.

I took the sabbatical. I wrote and produced my first ever podcast – an audio documentary, about my parents and my childhood. And I released it into the world.

And I came back to work, a very changed person, feeling rinsed, released, and like a blank slate.

I’m better at my work now, helping people tell their truest stories. Helping executives remember how to be real. Helping them find their most important words to talk about themselves.

Because I’m in a much more honest place myself.

And today, just this morning, I found myself looking out the window at the storm clouds giving way to sunshine in my Vermont backyard and I wondered:

What if THAT wasn’t the moment? The one in 2019 when I left the corporate world.

What if THIS is my moment, instead? The start of my next arc.

What if this is just the beginning of something I don’t yet see?

Maybe I won’t know for several more years. But I felt a surge of energy to even consider it.