Nothing Grows Outside In
She had a plan.
It was detailed, it was accurate, and it was keeping her completely stuck.
My client had spent months frustrated that two key members of her team weren’t stepping up. Every week she would come to our sessions with new evidence of what they were doing wrong—who dropped the ball, how they weren’t communicating, and who wasn’t getting along.
She wasn’t wrong.
But nothing was changing.
And slowly, the real question began to surface: What kind of leader do I want to become—regardless of whether these individuals change?
This question cracked something open.
Not because it let the team off the hook. But because the question gave her power back.
I have been sitting with a phrase ever since I read it in Richard Wagamese’s book Embers (a stunning book, by the way): Nothing in the universe ever grew from the outside in.
The author’s father used to say this to him. And I see this same thing again and again in my own life and in the work I do.
Clients often bring a source of suffering to coaching sessions. It could be a boss who isn’t treating them the way they want. Or one of their children who is difficult. Or a spouse who isn’t ambitious, connected, or thoughtful enough. Or a job that doesn’t fulfill them anymore.
People are oftentimes wanting to change the circumstances outside of ourselves—but sometimes we start sensing that something in them may need to change also.
In these moments, I always try to encourage clients to focus their attention within themselves. We can’t always change the other person. And we often can’t change the circumstances we are in. But we can always ask: What is it in me that wants to evolve here? What is it that is wanting to happen?
It’s easy to spend enormous energy focused on other people, other circumstances, the outside world. We can create long lists about what everyone should be doing differently—or how everything around us needs to change.
Have you ever caught yourself rehearsing a conversation in your head—replaying what you should have said, or carefully planning what you will finally say to someone else—while that other person appears to be living their life completely unbothered?
The problem is that outward focus keeps us stuck. It quietly hands our power to someone else’s behavior, someone else’s choices—and leaves us standing still.
When was the last time you were complaining about something and you stopped to ask: What if that person or thing stays exactly the same? What if nothing outside of me changes? In that case, what inside of me would need to evolve here—and what does that look like?
These honest conversations with ourselves are often the hardest ones to have. Some questions we can consider at these moments are:
What story am I telling myself about why I can’t change here?
What would I have to feel—or let go of—if I stopped waiting for them to change first?
How might I be using this situation to avoid looking at myself?
Anaïs Nin once wrote: “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
In other words, when something outside us is driving us crazy, it’s worth asking what it might be reflecting back to us.
The world is a powerful mirror.
And growth or change always comes from the inside out.
If this is true, what are we waiting for?
The embers for change are inside us. They always have been. The only question is whether we are willing to tend to those embers—and stop waiting for everything around us to change first.
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