Looking Beyond the Stress: Finding Growth in Life’s Changes - Part 2

Change is inevitable, but growth is optional.

In my last post, I set out to share the Transformation Model that has evolved for me over the span of my life coaching career. But I decided to share a personal illustration of the stages of the change process before I gave you the framework.

Part 1 left you with my description of the peculiar discomfort of liminal space - the in-between - where you are no longer who you were, but you cannot yet articulate who you are becoming. It requires staying present without rushing toward resolution. And that, for someone wired like me, felt like its own form of discipline.

And so, the surrender came. The softening happened. The receptivity started to form. All of this while my body still punished me for the lack of easy oxygen.

...Let’s pick up the story from there...[Click here if you want to read Part 1 in its entirety.]

Gradually, clarity began to surface—not about my circumstances, but about my values. I began to see that strength did not mean override. Faith did not mean force. Resilience was not synonymous with relentless striving. My body was not my enemy; it was my messenger. I found myself reaching for a concept I knew in my head, but now needed to live as a daily truth: God was less interested in relocating me than in reshaping me.

What began to reorganize inside of me was a quieter conviction: I could choose alignment over achievement. I could honor limits instead of denying them. I could measure success not by altitude conquered, but by integrity between my inner reality and outer life.

I began to make some adjustments - outward signs of an inward shift - that I never would have considered before running out of my well-worn performance-based strategies for managing outcomes.

For instance, I begged off when my biking buddies asked me to do a ride that was all climb - with the initial trailhead above 7,000 feet, and only up from there! I pulled back on my workload, as well as creating more white space in our social calendar. I did more of the outdoor adventures solo, or just with my husband, so I could regulate the anaerobic cardio impact better. So, my circumstances stayed, but my response to them changed.

Hm...doesn’t sound unlike how God works sometimes. He’s hearing our prayers, and answering them; just not the way we had in mind...(See Isaiah 55:8-9)

Over time, those outward adjustments became less about accommodation and more about identity. Saying no to certain outdoor challenges no longer felt like failure; it felt like wisdom. Pulling back from social expectations no longer felt like withdrawal; it felt like stewardship. The white space I once resisted became sacred space.

The mountains I lived in had not moved.  But something inside of me had. And that shift—not the change in circumstance—became the true transformation.

Although the altitude still challenged my physiology,  it no longer defined my worth. Now when the ingrained performance patterns surfaced, they no longer felt like my de facto mode. Something new challenged those old grooves. A different rhythm was taking root.

It took getting to the other side of this decade-plus narrative to realize I was walking through the same pattern of transitions to transformation I had been observing in my clients’ journeys over the many years of my coaching career. How I had been accompanying them through the uncertainties and lack of closure and understanding - all that comes with the change process - I was experiencing in and for myself.

I believe that’s what they call having to drink your own Kool-Aid?

My husband’s retirement signaled the end of my intractable dilemma - after almost twenty years of living in a contraindicated environment for my body, we traded the thin air of the mountains for oxygen-saturated, sea-level air. It didn’t take my systems long to absorb the change - my energy shot up to what my husband calls “intimidating." Now that's a problem we are both thankful to take on.

I would not go so far as to say I am glad for the grueling, soul-searing trial of those years; but what I carry forward is much broader and deeper than just an up close and personal understanding of how living at altitude can affect the body systems.  What I did not realize at the time was that this physical relocation marked the beginning of the final movement in my own transformation arc.

The journey through transitions to transformation is not neat or time-boxed. The stages can twist, overlap, and sometimes circle back on themselves. But the points on the path are recognizable. Looking back now, I can trace the movement along the line of an arrow, from left to right, that illustrated my story:

The stirring of discomfort, the unraveling of old identities, the long stretch of liminal uncertainty, the slow reorientation of values, and finally, a more authentic way of living.

Let me now translate my personal journey into the model that I believe depicts our common quest for transformative growth through the inevitable changes and challenges we face in life.

Think of this set of stages, placed along an arrow, not as a rigid rule, but a guide—an invitation to notice where you are, to lean into growth, and to trust that transformation will unfold as you intentionally move through the transitions.

As you reflect on your own path, consider where you are on the arrow. Are you just noticing an old way of moving in the world is not working anymore for you?

Maybe you are ready to name that pattern, and then consider releasing it for movement towards something more authentic to who you are becoming?

Or does “no turning back” resonate with where you are - in liminal space, between the old and new behaviors?

Or maybe  you most identify with the embodied stage - where a new behavior has become a new habit and feels more natural.

Rest assured, if you remain receptive, another awareness will come along to challenge your internal status quo, and you will find yourself back on the left side of the arrow - but more practiced as what is to come in the ongoing journey towards integration and wholeness.

Another way to capture the essence of this recognizable pattern:

Where are you along this path today, and what small step could you take to move toward the next stage of growth?”

**My offer of support: If you contact me via ‘chat w/ me’ on Perils & Pearls, I will gift you a thirty-minute coaching session to talk about where you are on this arrow, and where the opportunties for growth can be found in the in-betweens.

**And if you have been stirred to further explore your unique wiring – strengths, passions, challenges - & you would like to experience a strength assessment with a certified life coach, I invite you to contact me.

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Blessed to play a part ~

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