My first surprise of the day was the crowds. When my daughter and I were invited to a Gem and Jewelry show, I envisioned a small setup you could walk through in less than an hour. I should have paid more attention. It was held in the main part of the Houston Convention Center, and apparently we were late to the game for this phenomenon.

If you’ve ever attended any large trade show at a major city’s convention center, you will have some sense of what appeared before us as we walked through the doors into the main space. And remember, this is a gem and jewelry show. To say that the place sparkled would not be an exaggeration. We weren’t sure where to start. But then, off to the right, something caught our eye.

It was almost like a small corral. A fenced-off area inside the main room. At the entrance was a small gate, and several tables sat at the front. But the back seemed to be just a massive pile of rocks. All shapes and sizes, but basically a pile of brownish, rather dirty-looking rocks.

A small sign read $5.00.

Were they selling the rocks? Why would anyone pay $5.00 for an ordinary rock? It seemed that many would, as a line was already forming.

Our curiosity was piqued, and so off we went to that corner of the grand ballroom filled everywhere else with gems and jewelry.

As we neared the front of the line, we could hear the person at the gate giving instructions. For $5.00, you could choose a rock from the pile. Any rock. Some were quite large, others much smaller. But they were all $5.00. I soon learned you weren’t paying for the rock. You were paying for a roll of the dice for what was inside.

I handed over $10 so that we could each choose a rock.

Then the real surprise of the day happened. We took our rocks up to one of the tables where chisels and hammers awaited us. We cracked mine open first. It was just a rock. An ordinary rock.

Then we turned to my daughter’s, and when hers cracked open, the delight on her face was something I have never forgotten. The inside of her rock was beautiful. Incredibly beautiful. An exquisite amethyst was waiting for her inside.

Our first experience with geodes. What a wonder they are.

That revelation was over 25 years ago, and yet it remains a vibrant memory for both of us. In that moment, amethyst became her forever favorite gem. And since both my Mom’s birthday and hers were in February, that worked out well for future gift-giving!

Often, their gifts were jewelry, especially for my Mom. But I also took delight in helping my daughter create a collection of natural amethyst and other forms of quartz from geodes. As she looks out her kitchen window today in Alaska, she looks through the prism of those gems toward the mountains in her backyard.

Perhaps this memory surfaced after all of these years because over the past few weeks, surprises have been on my mind. Why sometimes we fear them, why sometimes we welcome them, and how what lives inside of them can bring us closer to the miraculous than any of our well-laid plans.

Think of all the times that people have walked by those rocks, never knowing what was living inside, just waiting for someone to care enough to look.

I’m beginning to think that the best moments of life are found when we least expect them.

What about you? When was the last time you were surprised?

Are you ready for your next surprise? It is closer than you might think.

The post When was the last time you were surprised? appeared first on Kathi Laughman.

When I was a young girl, I asked a lot of questions. Most children do. But in our house, a question rarely got a straight answer back. Instead, my parents would ask one of their own.

Why do you ask?
 
At the time, it felt like a dodge. I wanted an answer, not another question. But they weren’t avoiding mine. They were looking for it — the real one, underneath the one I’d said out loud.

It took me years to understand what they were doing. They knew that why someone asks is almost always more important than what someone asks.

That single exchange, repeated a hundred different ways across a childhood, turned out to be my first lesson in paradox. The question that felt like it was blocking me from an answer was actually the thing building my capacity to find one. It was, perhaps, the most meaningful question I’ve learned to ask.
 
I spent most of my career living out a grown-up version of that same exchange, even if I didn’t recognize it at the time.
 
I worked in integration — sales with operations, operations with finance, our systems with the systems of every vendor and client we touched. My job, in plain terms, was making things that weren’t built to talk to each other actually talk to each other.
 
What I learned there was the business version of “Why do you ask?”
 
A client didn’t just need data. They needed to know what the data meant to them — why it mattered, not just what it said. The value was never sitting in the fact by itself. It was sitting at the intersection of the fact and the person trying to use it. Sometimes you had to break the obvious logic of a thing before the real logic showed up underneath it.
 
So the child’s question and the executive’s dashboard turned out to be asking the same thing, just in different places: not what this is, but why it matters, to whom, and what it makes possible.
 
That’s the part I didn’t wholly see until recently. Questioning things wasn’t just a childhood habit or a professional skill. It was possibility thinking in the making. Because the moment you stop accepting a question — or a paradox — at face value, and start asking what it opens up, you’re not just understanding something. You’re building a door someone else can walk through too.
 
Over these last several weeks, in my weekly newsletter, I’ve walked through five of these pairings: learning and teaching, grief and gratitude, courage and fear, discipline and freedom, letting go and holding on.
 
At the time, each one felt like its own destination. Looking back now, I see they were never really separate stops. They were the same question, asked five different ways: Why do you ask? Why does this matter enough to hold both sides of it at once?
 
Take learning and teaching. I didn’t fully see that pairing as a true paradox until I watched it happen in real time—leading two webinars this spring and discovering, once again, that the moment I began to teach something, I understood it differently than I had a moment before.
 
That’s one of the reasons I’ve chosen teaching as my next season of work. Not because I have answers to hand out, but because teaching has always been one of the ways I keep asking better questions. Every workshop changes me before it changes anyone else.
 
Every pairing on this list did the same thing to me. It didn’t resolve into an answer. It opened into a bigger question. And that, I’ve come to think, is the deeper shape of possibility thinking — not solving the paradox but staying in it and curious enough to keep asking why it matters.
 
Here’s what I would like to leave with you:
 
Paradox was never really the point. Curiosity was.
 
So before you head into whatever comes next, these are the questions I invite you to consider:
 
What paradox have you been trying to resolve, when maybe it was only ever asking you to look closer?
 
Where in your life have you mistaken a question for a dead end, when it was actually a door?
 
And if someone asked you right now — why do you ask? — what would you find underneath your own question?
 
And as for what’s next for me, I don’t have a clear idea for that yet. But I know it’ll start the same way it always has. With a question I can’t quite let go of.
 
Because questions, like paradoxes, are never just what they seem. They are doors.

The post A funny thing happened on my stroll through paradoxes appeared first on Kathi Laughman.

Recently, I had the chance to listen to an interview with Simon Sinek. I’ve always appreciated the way he brings things to a human level—helping us find a different perspective so that we can make better choices.

The question they were discussing was how we should introduce ourselves. An age-old dilemma. It usually starts with “What do you do?” or perhaps “Tell me something about yourself.”

Our first response is almost always to begin with whatever we see as our most dominant role at the time.

I am a business executive.
I am a business analyst.
I am a business owner.
I am a teacher.
I’m a proud grandmother.

Or we lead with our industry, which for me was supply chain logistics.

Simon Sinek’s view was that we’re getting this wrong. And honestly, his take came as a relief to me—because all of those answers, while true, don’t really say anything about who we are.

His answer is quite different. He’ll tell you that he is an optimist and an author. Simple. Not comprehensive. But it reflects the heart of everything he does.

It made me pause.

What would I lead with?

For me, it is this: I am a possibilitarian and a writer.

I’ve always embraced that idea personally, but only recently have I begun using it as my introduction. And since I have, it has led to some meaningful conversations—and even better questions.

The first question is usually where the word came from. I first encountered it in Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. With all of the lessons in that book, that is the one that stayed with me.

Part of the reason it resonated so deeply is that it wasn’t new. It was something I had already been witnessing my entire life.

My heritage is filled with stories of people who were each possibilitarians in their own way—people who saw beyond what was in front of them and acted accordingly. Outside of my spiritual heritage, that may be the greatest gift I’ve received.

The second question is almost always this:

How is possibility thinking different from positive thinking?

It’s an important distinction, because we tend to fuse them together—as if they represent the same point of view. We reduce it to whether the glass is half full or half empty.

But that’s not what this is about.

It isn’t about how you see the glass.
It’s about what you see as possible from what is already there.

What could you do with it?
What might it become with just a bit of stretch?

In the end, nothing may shape our lives more profoundly than our ability to do just that.

Peale captured it this way:

“I challenge you to become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities—always see them, for they are always there.”

I’ve always been curious about where our words come from, and the root meaning of possible is telling:

Being able — having the power to act.

Capable of making happen.

Not hopeful. Not hypothetical.

Capable.

But capability only matters if we believe we have choices worth acting on.

We’re often told that life is shaped by our choices. But that’s only part of the truth.

What actually shapes our lives are the choices we believe we have.

And too often, we limit those without even realizing it.

We choose between A and B, never imagining that C might exist—or that we could create D ourselves.

Another way to think about it comes from something as simple as color. If the choices are blue or red, but what you really need is purple, you don’t choose—you create it.

We make decisions inside frameworks we didn’t design, without questioning whether the structure itself is the constraint.

What if the problem isn’t the decision… but the assumption that the options in front of you are all you get?

Poor decisions are rarely about bad judgment. More often, they begin with a narrow set of choices.

That’s why possibility thinking matters.

It isn’t about choosing better.
It’s about seeing differently.

Because sometimes, the most powerful option isn’t on the palette yet.

We have to create it.

Urgency pressures us to decide.
Possibility invites us to imagine.

You’re not always responsible for the options you’re given. But you are responsible for questioning them.

Some choices are clear. Others ask more of you. They ask you to redefine what’s possible.

And in doing so, they begin to define you.

That shift—from choosing within to creating beyond—is where being a possibilitarian begins to take hold.

And over time, it changes not just what you do… but how you do it—and who you become in the process.

Emily Dickinson wrote, “I dwell in Possibility—” and each time I return to those words, I’m reminded that dwelling is not passive.

You don’t wander into possibility by accident.

You choose it.
You inhabit it.
You live from it.

And when you do, what once felt out of reach begins to feel… possible.

Originally posted on The Possibility Factor (Substack) by Kathi Laughman on April 22, 2026

The post Are you a possibilitarian? appeared first on Kathi Laughman.

Author’s note: Selecting the right image for each article I write is part of the work. But it’s also a part I relish because I’m a visual person myself. When I come across something that halts my eye, I know I’ve found it. As it happened this week. What you see in the image above is something hikers will recognize. It’s a trail marker. It’s information for hikers, left by someone who went before. For us, it confirms that failure can be framed as a useful signal rather than a warning. Either from our own previous experience or that of others.

You delay the decision. You research it one more time. You hold onto the thing longer than you should. You avoid the conversation.

Do any of those sound familiar? They certainly do to me.

We tell ourselves we’re being careful, or just thorough. That we’re being responsible. But most of the time, we’re only fooling ourselves with those platitudes.

We’re not weighing the decision at all — we’re avoiding what we think failure would mean if we got it wrong.

We’ve been taught to read failure as a warning sign. Something to flinch from. Something that shows up at the end of a bad decision, confirming we shouldn’t have made it.

But what if we’ve been reading the signal backwards?

What if failure isn’t the consequence of a decision — but one of the inputs required to make better ones?

Here’s the line I keep coming back to from the work I’m doing now:

Everything makes something else possible. Including failure.

Failure isn’t there to stop you. It’s there to work for you — if you’ll let it.

That shift — from failure as risk to failure as a resource — changes everything downstream. It changes what you’re willing to try. It changes how long you will sit with a decision before you make it. And it changes what you do with the ones that don’t go the way you hoped.

All of that brought me to the thoughts I want to share with you here and to walk through what failure actually does for us when we stop treating it like an enemy and start treating it like a collaborator.

Seven things, one for each letter of the word itself.

F — Freedom

A — Awareness

I — Interrupt

L — Leverage

U — Uncover

R — Reframe

E — Elevate

That’s a progression.

Release. See clearly. Break the pattern. Use what you’ve got. Expand the possible. Change the meaning. Rise with it.

That’s the arc. Let’s walk it together.

FREEDOM

There are many reasons we avoid decisions. But the reason most people will give, when pressed, is fear. Not just any fear — the fear of failure. What if I get it wrong? What if this derails everything? So fixated on what could go wrong, we lose sight of what we’re resisting on the other side of the decision.

That’s why, to fully embrace failure as not just an unavoidable part of life but a necessary part of success, we have to free ourselves of that fear. Once we recognize that we have agency over the decision and everything that follows, we can see it as part of how and what we build, rather than a verdict on our worth.

For many years, I passed up opportunities to advance in my career because I was afraid I would be rejected for not having a college degree. I didn’t think I would fail at the job. I thought I would fail at getting the job. Rather than have to face that rejection (failure), I just didn’t try.

I decided to call my own bluff and went back to college in my 50s, finishing the degree. What I found out was that the opportunities had never been beyond me. I was placing myself beyond them. What I learned from going back to college was that the degree didn’t open doors. Deciding I was allowed to knock on them did. And when I looked back, I saw how many doors I’d walked past because I’d decided — before anyone else got a vote — that they weren’t mine to open.

I realized there were many lost chances due to that false narrative. That’s what fear does. It gives us a picture that’s meant to contain us, not free us. Failure, on the other hand, is there to do just the opposite. It sets us free from that fear so that we can move.

AWARENESS

I spent a good portion of my career in business intelligence. We gathered data, studied it, sorted it, and handed it back so others could make better decisions. But no matter how thorough we were, it didn’t always lead to the best choices — because there’s no way to fully exhaust the data or model every scenario that could happen. In many cases, what we missed only became visible after the decision had already missed the mark.

That’s the hard truth about information. It can only tell you what’s knowable in advance. And most of the decisions that matter live in the space where the knowable runs out.

Failure is what reaches into that space. It shows you what the research couldn’t — not because the research was bad, but because some things simply cannot be known until you move. Over-research is my trap. And what I’ve had to learn, slowly, is that over-research is fear wearing the costume of diligence. It looks productive. It looks responsible. But past a certain point, more data isn’t making the decision clearer — it’s just delaying the moment when you find out what you couldn’t have known anyway.

Failure gives you that information in a way no report ever could. It also does something else, something I didn’t expect: it shows you how much of what you feared was never real to begin with. Most of the catastrophes we spend our energy trying to prevent never actually arrive. The ones that do arrive are usually smaller and more survivable than the version we built in our heads.

That’s awareness. Not just seeing what happened. Seeing what was real.

INTERRUPT

There’s a meeting you’ve been meaning to have. A hire you know isn’t working. A direction the business took eighteen months ago that hasn’t played out the way you thought it would. You keep moving. The calendar fills. The quarter closes. And the thing you know isn’t right keeps getting ignored.

Then something happens. A client leaves. A number comes in low. A conversation you weren’t expecting forces the issue into the open. And for a moment — usually an uncomfortable one — everything stops.

That moment is the gift. Most of us treat it like a setback.

Failure interrupts. That’s its job. Not to end the journey, but to break the momentum long enough for you to see what the momentum was hiding. It’s the trail marker on the tree — the painted exclamation mark that tells the hiker the path just changed, pay attention. It isn’t telling you to turn around. It’s telling you that autopilot stopped working a while ago, and you didn’t notice until right now.

The hardest part isn’t the interruption itself. It’s what we do with the pause it creates. Most of us rush to fill it. We explain the number. We reframe the client departure. We tell ourselves a story that puts the momentum back where it was, because momentum feels safer than stopping. But the pause is where the choice lives. The pause is the whole point.

When you let the interruption actually land — when you let the failure do what it came to do — you get something you can’t get any other way: a clean look at the path you were on, from a standing position. You can see the turn that’s already happened. You can choose what comes next instead of inheriting it from what came before.

That’s what failure is offering when it interrupts you. Not a verdict. A vantage point.

LEVERAGE

What does this make possible? It’s the closest I have ever come to having a true-life mantra. It’s not about being opportunistic. It’s about leverage. If you believe, as I do, that everything makes something else possible, failure has to be in that realm as well.

When I wrote my first book nearly 10 years ago, it focused on resilience.  The title is Adjusted Sails: What does this make possible? I had gone from an empty nest season to losing my job to facing a significant health scare. All within a condensed amount of time. Wave after wave of what felt like getting knocked down. I had to find a way to get back up. It started with understanding each of those situations as something other than failure.

That’s where I realized we already have what we need, when we need it — if we’re willing to see it. And to invest it as a resource into what’s next. That’s the essence of leverage.

What we might initially see as failure is ripe with possibilities for leverage. Not just within that moment, but for the future as well.

I learned that the failures I was trying to hide were the very ones that could be teaching the most. And not just because what you bury, you repeat. Because it is also often where you have the most potent opportunity to serve others.

UNCOVER

There’s an old saying — it’s been attributed to Alexander Graham Bell, to Helen Keller, and to Cervantes before either of them — that when one door closes, another opens, but we often look so long and regretfully at the closed door that we miss the one that has opened for us.

The quote has traveled through so many voices because the pattern it names is that universal. We stare. We linger. We replay the closing. And while we’re doing that, something else is becoming available that we aren’t looking at yet.

That’s what failure does at the level of a single decision. It closes a door you were counting on, and while you’re standing there trying to understand why, it’s revealing something else. Information you didn’t have. A possibility you couldn’t see from where you were standing. A version of the path that was never visible to you until this door had to close.

The same pattern shows up in the physical world all the time, at a much larger scale.

Earthquakes reveal to us what the Earth is made of. Seismic activity has taught geologists more about the planet’s interior than any other source of information. When the plates shift, they expose rock that had been buried for millions of years. What feels like a catastrophe from the surface is also — at the same time — the only way certain information about the world becomes available.

The science is one thing. Living it is another.

When my daughter and her family moved to Alaska in 2018, they experienced a 7.1 earthquake that November. What I watched them learn over the months that followed wasn’t just how to prepare for the next one. It was how to live alongside the knowledge that the ground could move again at any time. They had to make peace with a kind of uncertainty most of us never have to reckon with directly. You see and feel things differently when you’ve been inside them.

My own version was milder. I was stuck in an elevator in California during a quake once. The whole building swayed. There was nothing to do but wait. When it stopped, and the doors finally opened, I walked out into a world that had been rearranged by something I couldn’t see and couldn’t control. I couldn’t tell you what had changed. But I knew something had.

That’s what failure does, too. The shaking ends. The doors open. And the world you walk into is not the one you walked out of.

REFRAME

The idea of framing and reframing was more literal for me before I decided to pursue life coaching as a possible next career season.

I love art. I always have. Some of my treasured pieces go back decades. But of note is the fact that I rarely kept the artwork in its original frame. In fact, sometimes I bought a piece just for the frame because I had a different, but perfect painting for it.

So when the master coach who led the training cohort said that one of the key values coaching brings is the ability to help ourselves and others reframe situations, events, and ideas — it became an extension of what I’d already discovered in a physical application.

How we see things depends, in part, on how they’re presented to us. But only in part — because we can change the presentation. That’s what reframing is. And it’s led me to one of my favorite discoveries: perspective is truth in motion. Because we can change where we’re standing, we can see what’s true from a different place.

But changing perspective isn’t spontaneous combustion. It needs a catalyst. And quite often, what we first see as failure is exactly that.

The question then becomes what the failure is trying to show us. Not to review what happened, but to change what happens next.

As a possibilitarian, I try to live by another often-quoted truth: when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Failure is one of the forces that lets that shift happen. It hands you the new frame whether you asked for it or not.

Failure doesn’t change the facts of what happened. A different frame doesn’t change the actual painting. But in both cases, the meaning changes. And the meaning is almost always what we were really responding to in the first place.

ELEVATE

Some of my favorite memories from childhood and my teenage years are of family trips from our home in Ohio to West Virginia. We went to visit my grandparents and to see the places where my parents had grown up.

One spot that my Dad and I frequented was Hawk’s Nest State Park. We climbed the peak of Gauley Mountain for the breathtaking view of the New River below. I didn’t just see a place. I saw history. My Cherokee ancestors had lived along that river. They had walked where we were walking. They had stood on this ridge. I didn’t have anything to prove that other than how it felt, but their story became real to me from that elevation.

Sometimes, we cannot see what it is we need to see until we can go to a higher plane.  It’s still about perspective, but it takes stepping out of the frame for this one.

When we are in the throes of what feels like failure, it can be easy to see only what is staring us in the face when what we need is to rise above that and see the whole vista. When we do, two things happen. Where we are becomes clearer. And what’s just beyond us — the thing we couldn’t see from the ground — comes into view. Failure is often what lifts us high enough to see both at once.

You don’t get better at decisions by making more of them; you get better by letting each failure raise the floor you make the next one from. Because once you’ve experienced the view from above, you’ll know how to find it again.

Which of those attributes of failure resonated most with you? While these do show a progression, it doesn’t mean that every failure does all of them every time. And, you may find, as I did, that as you work through them, you also begin to improve your overall decision framework because the lens keeps adjusting.

In his recently released book, How to Get a Return on Failure: Fail Smarter—Return Stronger, John C. Maxwell talks about this as moving from apprehension to appreciation of failure. His thesis is that to get a return on something, we have to first appreciate its value.

“Appreciating failure means properly estimating the advantages it brings as you learn from it. The ability to deal with failure opens doors to the exploration of new territory and a life of greater potential.”

That progression from apprehension to appreciation is what the seven letters are tracing. Freedom is where apprehension loosens its grip. Elevate is where appreciation finally settles in. Everything in between is the work of getting from one to the other.

Here are three ways you can begin that practice for yourself:

1. Pick one decision you’ve been circling for more than two weeks. Not the biggest one — just one. Now ask: am I stuck because the decision is actually unclear, or because I haven’t decided what failure would mean if I got it wrong? (Write down the answer before you do anything else.)
2. Look at the four behaviors I’ve mentioned — delaying, over-researching, holding on, and avoiding. Which one is running right now, in your life, today? (Name the decision underneath it. That’s where failure can work for you.)
3. For the next decision you face this week, don’t ask “what if this fails?” Ask “what could failure here make possible?” (Then decide.)

The decision you’ve been avoiding isn’t waiting for more information. It’s waiting for you to decide what failure would mean — and decide it doesn’t mean what you’ve been telling yourself it means. That’s the only decision underneath the decision. Everything else is just the path.

When we stay focused on finding the good in every situation — and on what it is making possible — success becomes inevitable.

That’s what I want for you, for all of us.

The post What do we keep missing about failure? appeared first on Kathi Laughman.

Two women were born in 1933. One in France. One in America.

The woman born in France was Jewish. Her name was Francine.

The American girl was born in a small town in West Virginia. She was a second-generation Cherokee. Her name was Peggy.

They came from different parts of the world and would face very different challenges. What they shared was coming into the world in the year Hitler came into power. That became part of both of their stories.

By the time Francine was eight years old, her father had been taken into custody as a prisoner of war. She had to wear the yellow star on her chest, marking her as Jewish. She and her mother were eventually taken to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany. Francine’s mother took two small pieces of chocolate with her, knowing there would be hard days ahead. She told her daughter she would save them for when they grew weak and needed strength. The chocolate would help get them through.

When another woman gave birth in the camp, Francine’s mother asked her if she thought they should give their chocolate to the struggling woman to help her have the strength to survive the birth. Francine didn’t hesitate and readily agreed. Despite dire conditions, both mother and child survived.

Six months later, British troops rescued them, and the camp was liberated. Francine and her mother were able to return to France, as did the other mother and child.

Life moved on from those dark days for all of them. Francine went on to write books and poetry and give lectures about her time in the camps. And give birth to her own daughter.

Many years later, when she was in her 80s, her daughter asked if she thought it would have helped her and the others freed from the camps if they had been given access to psychiatrists. She said she couldn’t say, mental health wasn’t something they even spoke of then. It was about survival. But that question inspired her to put together a symposium on the subject.

When one of the psychiatrists who had come to speak took her place at the podium, she began by saying she had a special gift for Francine and took out a piece of chocolate. She smiled warmly at Francine and said, “I’m the baby.”

Can you imagine the depth of feeling as the two women meet again after all those years? 

We don’t often get to see what comes from those moments of sacrifice. I found it very moving that they had a second divine appointment to meet. Somehow, you begin to understand from that moment that Francine and her mother gave so much more than a piece of chocolate.

The power of story always remains.

Listen to her tell her story in her own voice and words

Going back to our young girl growing up in West Virginia, her life took on a very different shape because of the war as well. Her mother worked as a tailor, making uniforms for soldiers fighting in Europe, to save those like Francine and her mother. Other friends and family lost loved ones who wore those uniforms. Their sacrifices were different. None compared to what Francine and her family experienced. But that time shaped everyone who lived through it.

That girl grew up, married a Marine, and moved to Ohio, where, in 1955, she gave birth to her first child, a daughter. Me.

I knew that my grandmother’s life had been changed by that war, but I hadn’t thought about the fact that my mother’s life began during that time. When I first heard Francine speak, I realized that they were contemporaries. The children also have their own stories to tell.

Listening to Francine talk about her conversation with her daughter, I thought of my own conversations with my mother.

I remember a telephone conversation with my Mom one summer, when I lived with my great-aunt and uncle in downtown Cleveland. My great aunt was recovering from heart surgery, and they needed help. On our call, I lamented missing home and my freedom. My mother reminded me that I wasn’t there for me.

She said I was born to fulfill a purpose, and that opportunities to make a difference would come throughout my life. They would never be a burden in the end, but a gift. It was the genesis of my understanding of having a purpose in the world and in my life. And the joy that would bring. She prophesied that into and over my life many times. She also modeled that in her own life. I have never forgotten it.

I find myself yearning again for conversations about her life with questions I never thought to ask. But still, I am comforted by the conversations we did have and my memories of her.

Thinking about both of these women, born in 1933, I’m reminded that no matter what our circumstances may be at any given time in our lives, we all have something to give. We are all called to give of ourselves, even to sacrifice at times. And, it is always a gift for us to have that opportunity.

It’s an important reminder and question to ask of ourselves with every encounter. How can I best serve in this moment?

The post The stories of two women born in 1933 appeared first on Kathi Laughman.

Welcome to the fifth and final installment of our Personal FAQs series, where we explore questions that can guide us as we continuously recenter, realign, and move forward with clarity throughout our lives.

To make it easier to ask questions that are relevant to where we are and what we need at any juncture, we have been reviewing five FAQs domains.

We move now to our final domain, Growth & Legacy.

The Five Personal FAQ Domains:

1. Identity & Purpose
2. Work & Contribution
3. Decision-Making & Direction
4. Integration & Rhythm
5. Growth & Legacy

Growth & Legacy

Some time ago, I wrote an article that has stayed with me. In fact, it’s one of my favorite pieces of my own writing if I’m allowed to admit that! The title of that message was this: Do Recipes Make You a Better Cook? 
 
As I was thinking about writing this final chapter of our FAQ series, I realized that while we’re discussing a specific domain, we’re also covering everything we’ve been reviewing together, because these FAQs culminate in two very specific outcomes. Growth and Legacy. They are stretching us, and in doing that, they are helping us leave our mark.
 
In that article, I shared the story of Chef Daniel Patterson. But the first question wasn’t about recipes. It was about GPS guidance systems. You see, Chef Patterson had gotten a new car, and it came with the then-default feature of GPS and navigation assistance. Initially, he resisted using it.
 
Then the day came when he decided to go ahead and take advantage of the technology. Before long, he recognized, like many of us, he had become dependent on it. Even when he went to places he frequented, he found himself relying on it. He was blindly following directions with no notice of his surroundings or where he was going.
 
When he realized what was happening, it startled him, and he began asking himself where else in life he (we) might be doing the same thing. Since he’s a chef, he naturally looked first at his world. Hence, the next question is whether recipes make us better cooks.
 
In fact, he himself wrote an entire article about it. It’s an excellent piece, and I encourage you to read it.

These words from that article were what inspired my own and brought it back to mind for this week’s message and wrapping up our series:
 
“Part of the problem with recipes today is that they seem to be predicated on the idea that a good recipe should eliminate the possibility of mistakes. But here’s a secret: Good cooks make mistakes all the time. They take wrong turns and end up in strange places. Their attention sharpens as they try to figure out where they are and how they got there. Eventually, they either reach their original destination or discover that wherever they stumbled into is really the best place to be. Sometimes it’s important to get lost.” 

Here’s what I wrote in my essay:
 
We are faced every day with “recipes.” Use these methods, these tools. Take each step in this order. Make sure you don’t substitute anything. In other words, if you want it to work, don’t change anything. In life and our work, I’m sure you recognize and hear the message as much as I do.

But what if that’s not right? What if the best result comes from using the recipe as a starting point rather than a rulebook? What if we start experimenting and venturing forward as creators and find our own results? That has far more appeal for me.
 
I want to encourage you to see the concept of FAQs or any guidance questions in this way. They are not meant to be prescriptive. They are meant, in fact, to help you get a little lost so that you can, in turn, find your way. They are simply a starting point. Experiment with them and venture out as the creator of your own, over and over again.
 
Remember that growth and legacy are the culmination of everything we’ve been exploring together. Identity, work, decisions, and rhythm set the stage, but growth is what keeps it alive, and legacy is what ensures it outlives us.

Why It Matters

Without growth and legacy, our questions risk being self-contained. Useful perhaps, but limited. When we add this domain, we stretch our perspective forward and outward. We begin to see that what we learn, contribute, and embody is not only for ourselves, but also for those who come after us.
 
This domain asks us to think about continuity.
 
What carries forward because we were here?

What are we making possible?

What to Look For

You’ll know it’s time to pay attention to this domain when: 

• Old answers start to feel too small for who you’re becoming.
• Others have started asking you for guidance, wisdom, or stories from your own journey.
• You’re unsure whether you are investing your time and energy in things that will last beyond your life or even this season.
• You begin to see traces of your influence showing up in the work, words, or choices of others.
• You want to shift your focus from what you’re achieving to the idea of impact.

Growth and Legacy FAQs

Remember that these FAQs aren’t about grand revelations. They are about grounding. They are prompts designed to invite honesty and curiosity about our current and future state. Only choose those that resonate with you for the season you are in.

Here are a few starting points for the domain of Growth & Legacy: 

• What can I be learning now that future-me will thank me for?
• How can I grow in ways that expand what’s possible for others?
• What do I want to grow with me, and what do I want to grow beyond me?
• How can I be intentional about the influence my choices create?
• How can I define and live my legacy right now through achievement, relationships, values, or something else?
• What stories can I be shaping today that reflect the life I want to live?

How do you know you’re asking the right questions? 

• When your questions stir both hope and responsibility.
• When they anchor you in today while opening a window to tomorrow.
• When they shift your thinking from “what’s in it for me?” to “what’s possible because of me?”

Which brings us back to where we started. Do recipes make you a better cook? Not on their own. But they give you a starting point, a structure, a spark. The same is true here.

And that’s the point. It was never just about the questions. It’s about what they guide you to see, to choose, and to create.
 
Here’s one final thought from Chef Patterson to help:
 
“Cookbooks should teach us how to cook, not just follow instructions. By paying attention, a cook should be able to internalize the process, rendering the written recipes obsolete. The point of a recipe should be to help us find our own way.” 

Read the recipe (FAQ). Learn from it. Then close the book. Create your masterpiece in cooking and in life.
 
Why? Because your FAQs are not meant to stay on the page. They’re meant to guide your next steps.

This Week’s Additional Resources:

• The Second Mountain by David Brooks
• David Whyte’s poem “What to Remember When Waking”
• Holy Moments by Matthew Kelly
• The Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelly
• Adjusted Sails: What Does This Make Possible by Kathi Laughman (Included with Kindle Unlimited)

The post FAQ Series: Growth & Legacy – What will you make possible? appeared first on Kathi Laughman.

Welcome to the fourth installment of our Personal FAQs series, where we are exploring questions that can serve us as we continuously recenter, realign, and move forward with clarity throughout our lives.

To make it easier to have questions that can help based on where we are and what we need at any juncture, we are looking at five different FAQs domains.

We have covered the first three domains and are moving on to Integration and Rhythm.

The Five Personal FAQ Domains:

1. Identity & Purpose
2. Work & Contribution
3. Decision-Making & Direction
4. Integration & Rhythm
5. Growth & Legacy

Integration & Rhythm

When you live your life
in harmony with your purpose,
there is no conflict or dissonance,
only clarity and direction.
~Kathi Laughman

This week’s topic is one of my favorites because I have spent much of my professional life focused on how to use effective integration to create bridges. Whether it has been between various groups, companies, trading partners, software solutions, or even entire industries, effective integration has been, for me, the ultimate playground for innovation.

Whether we are talking about our life, our work, or any of our roles, it isn’t about balancing competing silos. Like a beautiful tapestry, integration is about weaving things together. Then the rhythm is the tempo. It’s how your commitments, values, and energy flow together without forcing harmony where it doesn’t exist.

But even more than those silos, it’s key to know that integration isn’t about smashing all the pieces of a disparate group into one tidy puzzle. It’s more like jazz. Each instrument (your roles, goals, commitments, values) has its own sound, but the music only works when they listen to one another.

Rhythm provides the tempo, the pacing, the groove that keeps the music going.

Integration is about coherence; rhythm is about sustainability.

The most important thing I look for in a musician
is whether he knows how to listen.
~ Duke Ellington

Why It Matters

When we live without integration, life sounds more like competing noise than music. When we live without rhythm, even good things wear us down because we’re out of tempo. Together, integration and rhythm help us create a life that works in harmony, not because everything is easy, but because everything fits.

Without rhythm, even integrated priorities collapse under exhaustion. Integration ensures alignment, while rhythm ensures longevity.

What to Look For

• Are your priorities creating harmony or dissonance?
• Do your commitments flow together, or do they compete?
• Is your pace sustainable, or are you sprinting through a marathon?
• Do you have natural “rests” built in, like pauses in a song, that make the music stronger?
• Is your calendar consistent with your deeper story?

It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.
~Dizzy Gillespie

Integration and Rhythm FAQs:

Remember that these FAQs aren’t about grand revelations. They are about grounding. They are prompts designed to invite honesty and curiosity about our current and future state. Only choose those that resonate with you for the season you are in.

• What daily or weekly rhythms help me feel most alive and support my best work?
• What would integration look like if I treated my life less like a checklist and more like a composition? (My personal favorite!)
• What is the integration I’ve been resisting?
• Where do I need to slow down or speed up to restore balance?
• Where in my life do I feel most “out of tune,” and what would bring it back into harmony?
• How can I create natural pauses or “rests” in my schedule that strengthen the overall flow?

How do you know you’re asking the right questions?  

• The noise starts to quiet.
• You begin to notice less friction and more flow.
• You no longer feel like you’re juggling parts.
• Instead, you feel like you’re directing an ensemble.
• There’s a sense of coherence between what you want and what you’re doing.
• Your calendar feels like an ally instead of an enemy.

Integration and rhythm aren’t about perfect balance. They are essentially about freedom. Like jazz, the beauty isn’t in playing every note, but in choosing the right ones, and leaving space where silence belongs.

When your life begins to sound more like music than noise, you know you’ve found your rhythm. And from that rhythm, possibility opens. Not because you control every beat, but because you trust yourself enough to improvise.

And, by the way, here’s the best part: when you find your rhythm, you make space for others to join in. The music grows, the themes expand, and what you’ve created becomes more than a moment. It becomes a legacy. That’s where we’re headed next: Growth & Legacy.

This Week’s Additional Resources:

Note: This domain’s resources are a reading list I’ve put together for you because so many of you have said this is an area where you face the greatest resistance.

The idea, even fear, of doing less to accomplish more is so foreign to us that it’s no wonder we push back on that harder than anything. Each of these books speaks to something in that ongoing riff we have going with ourselves.

Check them out and then choose the one that makes the back of your neck tingle a bit. It’s likely the one you most need to read next. 

• The Art of Possibility — Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander

Blends the perspectives of a symphony conductor and a psychotherapist to show how possibility thinking reshapes how we work, create, and live. A beautiful reminder that life, like music, expands when we choose to see what’s possible.

• Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less — Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Challenges the myth that harder work equals better results. Pang draws on science and stories from great thinkers (from Darwin to Stephen King) to show why deliberate rest fuels creativity and productivity.

• The Infinite Game – Simon Sinek

Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules, and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. (Think of a symphony vs. a jazz trio).  Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading (and living) with a commitment to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year, even though we do not know the exact form this world will take. 

• Slow Productivity – Cal Newport

Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers from Galileo and Isaac Newton to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keeffe, Newport lays out the key principles of “slow productivity,” a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment.

• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and total involvement with life. Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance, so that we can discover true happiness, unlock our potential, and greatly improve the quality of our lives.

• Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives – Richard A. Swenson

Margin is the space that once existed between ourselves and our limits. Today, most of our lives are marginless as we battle overwhelm, burnout, and hurry. But there is a path to the life of balance and peace we crave. The benefits can be good health, financial stability, fulfilling relationships, and availability for your divine purpose.

• Elastic Habits: How to Create Smarter Habits That Adapt to Your Day – Stephen Guise

No two days are the same. By making your habits elastic, you can adapt to conquer every unique day of your life. The ultimate improv approach! Elastic habits give you an answer for every situation. Any dread or sense of monotony you’ve felt about forming habits will disappear, because this system is dynamic and exciting.

The post FAQ Series: Integration & Rhythm-Bringing Possibilities to Life appeared first on Kathi Laughman.

Welcome to the third installment of our Personal FAQs series, where we explore questions that can serve as we continuously recenter, realign, and move forward with clarity throughout our lives. 

To make it easier to have questions that can help us based on our current situation and needs at any juncture, we are examining five different FAQ domains.

We’ve now covered the first two, and we’re moving on to Decision-Making & Direction this week.

The Five Personal FAQ Domains:

1. Identity & Purpose
2. Work & Contribution
3. Decision-Making & Direction
4. Integration & Rhythm
5. Growth & Legacy

Decision Making & Direction

It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. ~Tony Robbins

When I went back to college in my 50s, it wasn’t because I suddenly had spare time. I was a single mom, working full-time, and adding school full-time to the mix was going to be a challenge without question.

What pushed me wasn’t ambition for its own sake, but frustration and the realization that I was passing up many opportunities simply because I didn’t have a degree. I decided to stop complaining about it and act.

My field of study this time around was Organizational Psychology, and one of my first classes was Effective Decision-Making. I thought it would be an easy filler. After all, I had many years of decisions already under my belt by this time. But it turned out to be one of the most transformative courses I’ve ever taken.

It changed how I thought about decisions, not just as choices but as turning points that could open new paths. I recognized their critical link to creating and honoring direction. That class and season of life became one of my favorites because I could feel how each decision was shaping the future in real time.

Why it Matters

Every decision shapes our story, whether by action or by delay. But not all decisions are equal, and without a framework, we risk drifting or reacting instead of choosing with intention.

But the framework doesn’t just mean drawing a line on a piece of paper and listing pros and cons. Not a bad exercise at times, but I’m talking about something more.

The framework that has served me has four parts or pillars.

• Clarity of Direction: Without a sense of where you’re headed, every option can feel equally urgent or equally confusing. Clarity doesn’t mean you know every detail of the future; it means you’ve chosen a general heading. When you name your desired direction, it becomes much easier to recognize whether a decision moves you closer or pulls you off course. 

Before weighing the details of any choice, pause and ask: What am I ultimately working toward?  Naming the direction helps you evaluate whether the choice is a step forward or a detour.

• Courage: Most of the decisions that shape our lives are not comfortable ones. They require stepping into uncertainty, risking rejection, or facing failure. Courage isn’t the absence of fear but the willingness to choose in spite of it. When we hesitate too long, the decision often gets made for us by default, and that is rarely the choice we would have made with intention. 

This means we need to call our hesitation into question. Ask yourself: Am I avoiding this choice because it challenges me, or because it’s truly unwise? Comfort-driven decisions often seem easier at the time but can lead to regret later.

• Consequence: Every yes is also a no. Decisions always carry trade-offs, whether in time, money, energy, or opportunity. Too often, we look only at what we gain from a choice, not what it will cost us. Considering consequences doesn’t mean we never take risks; it means we take them with our eyes open. 

When facing a decision, consider all the potential outcomes and risks. When we weigh both sides honestly, we take ownership of our choices rather than feel blindsided by them later.

• Alignment: A decision that looks good on paper can still be wrong if it doesn’t align with your deeper values and long-term story. Alignment asks: Does this choice fit who I want to be and what I want my life to stand for? It also asks if this decision is in alignment with all of the other priorities you are working from in any given season. When decisions are aligned, they may still be difficult, but they carry a sense of integrity and peace that sustains us through the challenges.

Always view decisions through the lens of your future self. Does this decision help you build the kind of life or work you want to be known for? Or does it compromise something you know matters deeply to you? Alignment ensures that progress isn’t just movement, it’s movement in the right direction.

What to Look For 

• Replaying the same choice over and over without resolution.
• Waiting so long to decide that circumstances decide for you.
• Saying yes automatically and only realizing later what you’ve said no to.
• Second-guessing yourself after every choice instead of moving forward with it.
• Choosing what feels comfortable now but leaves you stuck later.
• Avoiding opportunities because you’re afraid of getting it “wrong.”

The two biggest barriers to good decision-making
are your ego and your blind spots.
Together, they make it difficult for you to
objectively see what is true about you and
your circumstances and to
make the best possible decisions.
 
~ Ray Dalio

Decision-Making and Direction FAQs:

Remember that these FAQs aren’t about grand revelations. They are about grounding. They are prompts designed to invite honesty and curiosity about our current and future state.

This week, we’re focused on the four pillars. Together, they invite us to consider these questions: 

• Am I clear on where I’m going?
• Am I willing to choose courage over comfort?
• Am I being honest about the trade-offs?
• Am I aligned with my deeper story?

When those four are in place, you can step forward with confidence even if the outcome isn’t guaranteed because you’ve made the best decision available to you.

How do you know you’re asking the right questions?

• They move you from confusion to clarity.
• They help you recognize both opportunity and consequence.
• They create momentum, and you can sense the next step more clearly.
• They invite courage, not just comfort.
• They connect today’s choices to tomorrow’s story.

In the long run, we shape our lives,
and we shape ourselves.
The process never ends until we die.
And the choices we make
are ultimately our own responsibility.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

When I look back at my decision to return to college, I can see now how it rested on all four pillars of strong decision-making. At the time, I didn’t have this language for it, but I was living it.

• Clarity of Direction: I knew exactly why I was going back. I was tired of being passed over or holding myself back because I didn’t have a degree. My direction was clear: I wanted to create new opportunities by removing that barrier.
• Courage: The choice wasn’t convenient. I was a single mom, working full-time, and adding school full-time to my plate. It would have been easier to stay where I was. Choosing school required courage to step into the unknown and believe I could carry the load.
• Consequence: I understood there would be costs. Time, energy, money, and countless late nights were all real trade-offs. But I also saw that the greater cost would be doing nothing and remaining stuck where I was.
• Alignment: At the heart of it, going back to school aligned with who I wanted to be. Growth, resilience, and possibility had always been part of my story. This choice honored those values and set an example I hoped my daughter would carry forward in her own life, and she has.

That decision didn’t just earn me a degree. It changed how I saw myself and how I shaped my future. It confirmed what I now believe with certainty: We really are always just one decision away from a different direction.

Remember that decisions are where true possibility begins.

Of course, decisions don’t stand alone. Once we’ve chosen a direction, the real test is weaving those choices into the rhythms of our daily lives and ensuring they integrate with the bigger picture.

This Domain’s Additional Resources (Books):
 
Thinking in Bets — Annie Duke
Principles — Ray Dalio
The Road to Character — David Brooks
Right Thing, Right Now – Ryan Holiday
The Power of No: Because One Little Word Can Bring Health, Abundance, and Happiness – James Altucher and Claudia Altucher

The post FAQ Series: Decision-Making & Direction – What Do I Want To Be Possible? appeared first on Kathi Laughman.

Welcome to the second installment of our Personal FAQs series, where we are exploring questions that can serve us as we continuously recenter, realign, and move forward with clarity throughout our lives.

To make it easier to have questions that can help based on where we are and what we need at any juncture, we’ll be looking at five different FAQs domains.

The Five Personal FAQ Domains:

1. Identity & Purpose
2. Work & Contribution
3. Decision-Making & Direction
4. Integration & Rhythm
5. Growth & Legacy

Domain: Work and Contribution

“What you do makes a difference,
and you have to decide
what kind of difference
you want to make.”
~ Jane Goodall

We often define ourselves by what we do. The title in our email signature. The headline on our LinkedIn profile. The responsibilities we list on a résumé.

But here’s the truth: The real question isn’t what you do. It’s what disappears if you don’t.

What difference does your work really make?

Work is how we spend our hours. Contribution is the imprint those hours leave behind. Sometimes they align beautifully. Other times, we stay busy but wonder why it feels hollow. We produce, but don’t necessarily contribute.

Contribution doesn’t always come from a job. It also shows up when you mentor, create, volunteer, parent, or simply show up for someone. What matters isn’t where it happens, but whether it carries meaning and whether it sparks something only you can spark.

That spark is the key. Like a single flame in a box of unlit matches, your work matters most where it ignites something no one else could.

This domain is about strategy: the discipline of continually reviewing what you’re doing and the difference it’s making. Because what mattered yesterday might not matter today. And just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean it deserves your best energy.

When your work and your contribution align, possibilities expand, not only for you, but for everyone touched by what you do.

“Far and away the best prize that life offers
is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
~ Theodore Roosevelt

Why It Matters

• Work without contribution is hollow. It may keep you busy, but it doesn’t move anything forward.
• Contribution without strategy is fragile. Good intentions can burn you out if they’re not aligned with sustainable effort.
• Continuous review is essential. Work and contribution are dynamic. What was once your best expression may now need to evolve.

What to Look For

• Places where your work grows, but your impact doesn’t.
• Signs that your contribution is more visible to others than to you.
• Efforts that drain you but don’t create a meaningful or lasting difference.
• Spaces where your contribution creates ripples far beyond the immediate outcome.

Work and Contribution FAQs:

Remember that these FAQs aren’t about grand revelations. They are about grounding. They are prompts designed to invite honesty and curiosity about our current and future state.

That’s how these FAQs work best. They aren’t here to define us. They’re here to help us uncover what’s trying to emerge. Choose only those that speak to you now. 

• Where does my contribution align most clearly with what I say I value, and where does it conflict?
• What question would never get asked in the room if I weren’t there to ask it?
• If I measured my work by ripple effect instead of output, how would the scoreboard change?
• What part of my contribution is invisible but essential?
• If my work stopped tomorrow, who or what would notice first, and who wouldn’t notice at all?
• What doesn’t happen if I don’t show up, and what new possibility appears because I do?
• What am I protecting that no longer needs me, and what am I neglecting that only I can protect?
• When does my contribution create possibilities for others, and when might it unintentionally get in their way?
• Am I building something that outlives me, or am I simply exchanging hours for results?

How do you know you’re asking the right questions?

• You start measuring your work by impact, not output.
• You can name contributions that are uniquely yours and protect space for them.
• You begin pruning and letting go of work that looks good but doesn’t really matter.
• You notice ripple effects from the difference your contribution makes in other people’s ability to contribute. 

“Plant trees under whose shade you do not plan to sit.”
~Nelson Henderson

This Week’s Additional Resources (Books, Podcasts):

Books

• Pam Slim – Body of Work → frames your life’s contributions as a portfolio, not just jobs.
• Simon Sinek – The Infinite Game → reframes contribution as a long game, not a quick win.
• Michael Bungay Stanier – How to Begin → practical guidance for choosing and pursuing what matters.
• David Brooks – The Second Mountain → explores the shift from success-driven work to contribution-driven life.

Assessments & Strategy Tools

• Jonathan Fields – Sparked (book) Sparketype (assessment) → a practical tool for identifying the kind of work that sparks you, especially if you’re unsure what contribution is uniquely yours.
• SkillFlow (discovery tool) → a method for reviewing how your skills flow into contributions, surfacing what only you can give, aligned with identity and impact. (This link is to the message on this tool I developed. If you are interested in knowing more, just let me know.)

Talks

• Simon Sinek – How Great Leaders Inspire Action → His signature message about the power of beginning with WHY
• Michael Ivanov → Inspiring author and speaker on leading with purpose and reaching your full potential

The post FAQ Series: Work and Contribution – What Do I Make Possible? appeared first on Kathi Laughman.

Welcome to the first post in our Personal FAQs series, where we will be exploring questions that can serve us as we continuously recenter, realign, and move forward with clarity throughout our lives. 

To make it easier to have questions that can help based on where we are and what we need at any juncture, we’ll be looking at five different FAQs domains.

The Five Personal FAQ Domains:

1. Identity & Purpose
2. Work & Contribution
3. Decision-Making & Direction
4. Integration & Rhythm
5. Growth & Legacy

Having core FAQs across all domains isn’t about reaching final answers. It’s about staying present to who we’re becoming and how that impacts other aspects of our life and body of work.

However, our first domain is where they all have their genesis and foundation.

We’re beginning with the domain at the center of everything: Identity & Purpose.
 
We think of identity as something we discover. But the truth is, it is something that we continue to uncover. It evolves. And when it does, our purpose can as well. That’s why the pairing is important.
 
The key is to understand that for both, change is always part of the equation in some form.
 
In my book, Adjusted Sails: What does this make possible? I share a personal experience with this. When my daughter got married, and I was facing that empty-nest season, I started by asking the usual questions: Is she okay? What does she need? How can I support her?
 
But the more important questions were not about her at all. They were about me and my role in life. What was I going to do now? Who would need me? How could I adjust to MY new life? Those questions were harder. I was unprepared for them.
 
Our roles will always change. And with those changes, who we are beneath them and how we define purpose for ourselves is something we’re invited to revisit again and again.
 
That season of navigating the empty nest was a significant disruption to my sense of identity and purpose. At the time, family was the core of how I defined both. But over the years, and through many transitions since, that definition has continued to expand.

That is, once again, why this domain is so important. This is the root system. Before clarity in strategy, productivity, or even alignment, we need to be anchored in who we are and why we’re here. For solopreneurs and professionals, especially those building values-driven lives and businesses, identity isn’t just personal—it’s structural.

Identity & Purpose FAQs:

The questions that helped me navigate transitions like going from full-time single mom to someone exploring new callings weren’t always the ones I expected.

I didn’t need grand revelations. I needed grounding. I needed prompts that gave me room to be honest. Questions that invited curiosity rather than demanded clarity.

That’s how these FAQs work best. They aren’t here to define us. They’re here to help us uncover what’s trying to emerge.

• What qualities in myself feel most alive, most true, in this season?
• Who am I becoming by choice, not just by circumstance?
• If someone were to describe the legacy I’m living in this season, what would I want them to say?
• What environments or moments help me feel most connected to myself? And which ones disconnect me?
• What values have I outgrown as my primary priorities, or am I now ready to release?
• What labels or roles no longer reflect who I am?
• What forgotten parts of me want to re-emerge?
• What parts of myself am I still waiting to be “ready enough” to share?
• Where am I compromising who I am in order to be who I think I should be?
• What would I choose if I didn’t need to explain it to anyone?

In this context, the best questions aren’t the ones that give us answers. They’re the ones that give us pause and change how we see ourselves. That’s what these are meant to do.

Also, remember that your FAQs aren’t questions designed to be answered once. They’re meant to travel with you.

How do you know you’re asking the right questions?
 
They don’t just make you think, they help you see.
 
The right questions about identity and purpose don’t just remind you of who you’ve been. They reconnect you with who you’re becoming. They clarify what matters most to you now and illuminate the next right step.
 
The result of asking good questions in this domain isn’t a perfect label or a polished personal mission statement.
 
It’s movement that leads you to a deepening awareness of what gives your life meaning, and a growing sense of alignment between who you are and how you show up in the world.
 
That’s how you know. You feel less lost in the noise of expectations and more at home in your own story.

A Shift You Might Notice

Sometimes, you’ll revisit a familiar question and discover a completely different answer.

That can be because we move into a different season so we have a definite change in our primary roles. But it can also simply be because we grow. We learn more about ourselves and how we want to interact with our world.

The questions stayed the same. We changed.

And that’s the beauty of these FAQs. They can and will evolve as we do.

As we grow, so will the opportunities for us and the ways we express ourselves.

But it starts with giving ourselves permission to grow. When we give ourselves permission to grow, we allow new perspectives to come into view.

So, here’s a bonus question for our first domain:

• If I gave myself full permission to live on purpose today, what would I do differently?

This Domain’s Additional Resources (Books, Podcasts):

1. Awake at the Wheel by Jonathan Fields on Substack and his podcast The Good Life Project.
2. Essentialism by Greg McKeown – A powerful reminder that purpose often lives just on the other side of letting go.
3. Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud – One of the most powerful and impactful books I’ve ever read on purposeful change. Something doesn’t have to be broken for it to be ready for change. Just as we prune our plants, we must often let go of what looks like a perfectly good branch so that better ones can emerge and grow.

The post FAQ Series: Identity, Purpose, and Permission to Grow appeared first on Kathi Laughman.