Have you ever found yourself stuck in a situation where you felt that someone or something needed to change for you to be truly happy or successful? This is a common scenario, but the truth is transformation is an internal job. 

Our behavior is rooted in beliefs. We often want to change our behavior or someone else’s and are met with resistance. Other times when we ask someone to change, we elicit fear and a need to protect a sense of self. Only when we feel safe enough to change, do we. In addition, sometimes we are often fed up enough to change as well.

Culture is often invisible. Making culture visible allows for clarity, consistency, and ultimately builds trust.

There is a lesson in everything. Both in positive and negative experiences. Some lessons come in the form of a seed planted many years ago, which finally blooms when our resistance to change is exhausted and we surrender to the teaching. Oftentimes, it is when we realize we have the power to shift the situation and we finally take action.

Here are a few things I learned in 2020-2021 and finally practiced in 2022 …

Underneath intention is the question of why. The result of understanding our intention is the difference between flow and hustle. Energized and burned out. Contentment and frustration.

When you do the deep work to identify your values, you no longer operate from other people’s values or conditioned beliefs. You operate from your truest self.

Can you truly team-build and vision-set when the conditions of the team are unspoken? The True Team Inventory names the current reality, desired reality, and roadblocks. It provides teams with a framework to have an honest conversation about their team dynamics. If your team has never conducted a True Team Inventory conversation, chances are there is untapped potential for your team and organization.

The thing is sharing our stories is the most human and real thing we can do. Because learning to speak and share our truth is what Truth Collective is all about.

When creating a healthy, high-performing team culture, language matters. Try out our team exercise to help your team create shared definitions and norms around collaboration.

Experiences and words shape us. Often our view of self is shaped by external factors that tell us who we are and who we should be. As for me, I followed the praise, compliments, and early achievements to craft a life. Yet, just because you are good at something doesn’t mean it’s right for you. The gift of being stuck and unhappy is that it set me on the path to discover my true self.

Reacquainting with your True Self requires you to unpack and rebuild your own truths, to create new paradigms, and live a life where you show up as you. It requires you to think for yourself. When we begin to understand who we are apart from what the world tells us we need to be, when we seek internal validation and our inner knowing to guide our path, then we become the authentic leaders, coworkers, friends, and family members that we long to be.

The Collective is an online membership with access to all of Truth Collective’s work. While working with people directly through consulting, coaching, and speaking engagements remains at the core of what we do, there has always been a lingering question: How can we share our work more broadly so that we can impact more people? The Collective was born out of the desire to make our work more accessible and affordable.

To create Truly Inclusive cultures and communities, it requires relational work, not check-the-box workshops and staying at surface level. If you aren't digging deep, doing the head and heart work, and having raw conversations, you are performing, not transforming.

Truth Collective is about transformation. It’s the willingness to reveal who we are, to filter through what has gotten in the way and blocked us from living and speaking our truth, and to create new ways of being and doing.

For most of my life, I was driven by shoulds rather than a life fully lived and loved. To awaken to a new way requires you to question and shed what you have always known. To realize the power you seek resides within you.

Our job is to show up each day, be authentically who we are, and trust that we are exactly where we need to be. But it is not automatic. It doesn’t just happen. That’s where I got it wrong. It takes work. Deep internal work.

At the end of the day, change is the only certainty in life. Surrender to the change and the mystery of we don’t know what will happen. The risk is worth living in the current state if you long for more.