Are you willing to let go of your attachments to everything that you are not in order to become everything that you are?

This question isn’t just thought-provoking—it’s a powerful call to action for personal transformation. Today, I share a deeply personal journey of letting go. It’s a story that asks us to weigh our values and consider what really matters.

From Scarcity to Abundance: A Personal Journey

At 34, I was a single mother and barely paying my bills every month. The nanny I hired agreed to work for less if she could bring her own newborn. It was the only I way I could return to work. I was riddled with financial fear, writing about it constantly in my journal, convinced money was what I most needed to be happy.

Understanding now how the laws of attraction work, I’m not surprised that I met and married a wealthy man, moving from a modest home in need of a new roof to the sprawling grounds of an English estate.

Arriving at his private jet in my sister’s hand-me-down Volvo, headlights duct-taped in place, my life was a stark contrast to what was being offered. Everything changed when I married and moved.

My wardrobe, mostly Gap and Old Navy, was replaced with designer clothes chosen by a London celebrity stylist who was dressing me. I was working at the University of Oxford’s business school, facilitating retreats for members of the Young Presidents Organization (one of the most powerful networks in the world) and seemingly living a dream. Yet, despite the external appearances, I was spiraling, losing energy, drifting away from a life of connection and purpose.

The Pivotal Question

This is when my coach asked, “Are you willing to let go of your attachments to everything that you are not to become everything that you can be?”

I was so scared. So resistant to letting go of the newfound security and identity that wealth provided. But with courage and an army of healers, I left it all —Oxford, my clients, and the UK—to start anew in California with my teen-age child. It was the only choice I could make if I was truly going to live an attuned and aligned life. I let my core values be my guide.

Living as Abundance

In California, I embraced a radical new outlook. Declaring “I am abundance.” It wasn’t about financial wealth but about adopting a mindset of gratitude and generosity. Suddenly, our tiny home seemed more abundant than anything I had in the UK. The opportunities to contribute to the community where I moved were everywhere, and they led me on a path to a greater connection to purpose.

This transformation wasn’t overnight. It required a daily commitment to act from a place of abundance—even when I felt anything but. Over time, I replaced the luxury of private jets and multiple homes with far more meaning — faith, family, friends and service.

What About You?

So, I pose the same question to you: Are you willing to let go of the attachments to what you are not in order to become all that you can be? Embracing change isn’t just about letting go—it’s about stepping into who you are meant to be, abundantly and authentically.

Change is daunting, but as my journey illustrates, it can be the gateway to true fulfillment and happiness. What are you holding onto that’s keeping you from your fullest potential? Sometimes, the greatest risk lies in guarding our present selves too fiercely, denying the abundant life that awaits.

Are you ready to embrace change and step into abundance?

Over the past few years, I have moved from being a performance coach to a transformational coach, and that is changing who wants to work with me, or perhaps I should say, it is changing the clients that I am attracting.

As a performance coach, I was super happy to share tools, frameworks and models with my clients on running better meetings, making smarter decisions, giving better feedback and delegating with more skill. Progress was easy to track, and results were fast. Since becoming a coach in 2008, I have worked with more than 100 organizations and I continue to work with some powerful organizations in the world, like the University of Oxford and YPO.

While I certainly still use those frameworks to help my clients achieve success, I’m much more interested in what constitutes success. What are their dreams are and where they come from? That is at the core of transformational coaching which can lead to a radical reorientation of your life.

Working with my transformational coach means that I now live every day in active creation of my life. That is a sentence I didn’t understand until I turned a 50. What does it mean to live in active creation of your life every single day?

When I meet potential clients, what I’m most interested in talking about is the life they want to live. At their most profound level, who are they and what do they feel called to do? What are the choices they are making and where do those choices come from? Sometimes people ask, what would you do if you knew you would not fail. I like to know what you would do even if you knew you would fail.

If you are seeking transformational coaching, it may mean a radical reorientation of your life, especially if you are out of integrity with yourself. If you’re not sure about that, start auditing your life and notice your feelings. If you can, track what you are doing and how it makes you feel. How are you showing up to your life, and what are the stories you are telling about the way you show up?

If you don’t like how your audit turns out, it might be time to seek help and summon the courage to do the deep work. Courage is required because if you’re like me, you might see that you’ve been clinging to things because you think they make you feel safe, loved and like you belong.

Transformational work requires us to get clear on how things make us feel; and, spoiler alert, you may discover that what you think you makes you feel safe isn’t actually making you safe, and where you think you belong might actually just be you doing a stellar job at fitting in.

Transformational coaching is not linear, it is emergent. It’s hard to predict how long it takes for people to change and we must let the process unfold. Sometimes our only step is the next step because there is no going around what might be in the way. There is only going through it.

We also need time to cultivate a boundless reservoir of self-compassion. That part is non-negotiable because you may discover some parts of you in the shadows that are less integrated and a little scary. Self-compassion is how you love and support yourself through transformation.

Here are some of the steps I take when doing transformational work with my clients.

Find Your North Star

Using imagination, intuition, inspiration and a set of guiding principles or values, envision the life of purpose that you want to live. This is transformational for anyone who hasn’t done it. Prior to experiencing transformational coaching myself, the only path I followed was the one that offered the illusion of love, safety and belonging. I say it was an illusion because I didn’t know what it meant to feel self-love, safe in my own being and what it has meant to belong to myself.

Engage in Radical Self Inquiry

What are your old operating systems? What are they telling you to do to stay safe? The things about your current life that you don’t like, ask yourself how you have contributed to creating them. With self-compassion, acknowledge and love all that you are with the knowledge that your behavior was learned, maybe handed down from another generation, maybe modeled by your own caregivers from a time before you can even remember. Whatever it is, say yes to it. This is how I’m showing up to my life.

Replace Old Stories with New Ones

To set a new course, we must get clear on the old stories we are telling ourselves, and believe we deserve to tell a new story. Our North Star is our intention and we when we live in integrity with those commitments to being, we can begin to tell new stories of our lives. As the novelist John Barthes once wrote, “the stories of our lives are not our lives, they’re stories,” and you get to write the story of your life. This also means learning to recognize when the old stories are rearing their heads, and finding a voice to respond to them that says something like, “thank you for looking out for me, but I got this.” Return to your North Star and your values.

Practice Awake Awareness

In transformational coaching, we learn to not only live into our vision for our life now, but also to be mindful of the present. To be in active creation of our life every day requires us to notice how things are occurring to us moment by moment. What is happening and how is it making me feel? When you change the way you look at things, it changes the way things look. If you are interested in exploring real transformation, I would love to hear from you. Yes, I’ll still help you be a better leader, but you’ll become a better leader because you are becoming a better human being.

Join Me in Transformation.

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