When certain clients have been with me for a while, they are able to see progress in that they feel a lot more energized, more present, and more creative than they ever were.

However because we have been entrenched in certain patterns and beliefs for 30-40 years of our lives, sometimes the suspicion can set in where someone feels like, “This seems too good to be true – should I be worried?”

This usually comes when our feedback loops have been wired in a very specific way: where hard means meaningful, stretch means committed, and uncomfortable means growing, which therefore could sometimes mirror the inverse. If life feels easy we are coasting; if life feels steady we are plateauing; if we are comfortable then we are being complacent.

This goes to show how sometimes our beliefs still need to update themselves even after we have changed the environment so both internal and external need to be updated.

Sometimes we can change our external a lot faster than our internal because our internal state was entrenched with years of conditioning already.

When someone genuinely feels a lot better, they start to sleep better, think more clearly, and show up more fully, a part of them views this change with suspicion vs progress.

Part of what makes this hard is also the quality of what’s doing the driving. There are two kinds of fuel.

1. Dirty fuel – fear of falling behind, anxiety about not being enough yet, the sense that if you stop pushing something will collapse . It produces results but also burn out.
2. Clean fuel – different in quality, not quantity: the work that pulls you rather than pushes you. It’s more from curiosity on what your best can be.

Most high-achievers are practiced at optimising their output using dirty fuel because it is tangible and can be accessed more immediately i.e ‘cheaply’.

What clean fuel looks like:

1. A client rebuilding her capacity to make decisions from a place of self-trust vs asking 6 different people for their opinions.
2. Another learning to hold his judgment when a project goes off-track, rather than spiraling into whether it means something about him.
3. Someone else getting clear on what she actually wants from the next five years, and not basing it on society’s expectations or norms.

I know this particular pattern well. My own capability-building seasons have rarely felt impressive which got my achiever part feeling very uneasy.

When I left Google last year, there were a few months (even at present) that would not look productive externally – e.g reading, thinking, having conversations, building things slowly.

By the standards of my corporate years, it seems unproductive. By the standards of what I was actually doing, it was some of the most important work I’ve done. The ideas and frameworks that now sit at the centre of what I teach with clients were built in exactly that kind of regulated space. Not in a sprint of non-stop doing but in a season where I finally had enough room to think.

What I try to help clients and myself understand is that there are different seasons of growth. Some seasons do not seem as visible as others. For example, they are more of a capability-building season.

However some of the most important internal development, including clearer thinking, more present relationships, and a sharper discernment of what areas of their lives need more investment – might not look visible or impressive from the outside. But they are the things that truly matter.

Reflection Question: Am I running on the right fuel and do I actually know the difference?

If something in this post made you pause, that’s usually worth looking at. Learn more about working with Natalie here.