Kristen peels back the glossy layers of the personal development world and gets radically honest about what real growth looks and feels like. Spoiler alert: it’s not always pretty—and it’s definitely not linear.
If you’ve ever thought, “Why am I still dealing with this?” or felt stuck in self-help shame spirals, this conversation is your permission slip to ditch the unrealistic timelines and redefine what growth really means.
Kristen dives into:
- Why consuming personal development content isn’t the same as doing the work
- The danger of turning personal growth into a self-shaming tool
- What it means to turn in your “victim card” and reclaim radical responsibility
- How to spot when you’re stuck in a pattern vs. truly evolving
- The nature-inspired reminder that nothing in life grows endlessly—and that’s okay
Plus, she shares a heartfelt personal reflection about fulfillment, redefining success, and how breaking her own patterns led to unexpected transformation.
Whether you’re working on your mindset, relationships, business, or just trying to become the best version of yourself—this episode will meet you where you are.
Key Takeaways:
- Growth is not a straight line—expect spirals, setbacks, and seasons.
- Awareness without action is a trap. Real change requires implementation.
- Stop treating yourself like a never-ending project to fix.
- True growth happens when you love yourself through the process—not once you “arrive.”
- Fulfillment metrics matter more than performance metrics.
Timestamps:
00:58 – Welcome back + the truth about “growth drama”
02:52 – Consuming vs. integrating personal development
04:50 – Turning in your victim card and owning your agency
07:34 – The shadow side of self-help culture
12:23 – When personal growth turns into self-shaming
19:24 – What nature teaches us about healthy growth patterns
23:52 – Revisiting old wounds from a new level of awareness
27:46 – How Kristen manages her own defaults around hustle
30:19 – Why fulfillment > achievement
33:21 – A new lens for your lifelong journey
Mentioned in This Episode:
Join Sondera Signature Membership – Weekly coaching, transformative tools, and deep work to help you break patterns and build a meaningful life. (Special offer ends November 1st—don’t miss it!)Love the podcast? Drop a quick rating and review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more people find the show—and we’d love to shout you out on Instagram. Tag @thekristenboss with a screenshot and your biggest takeaway.
Timestamps:
0:00 – Introduction: What is resilience, really?
2:00 – “Feelings goals” vs. outcome goals
8:30 – Why discomfort feels like danger to your brain
14:00 – Pillar 1: Stress adaptability
19:15 – Pillar 2: Cognitive flexibility
25:30 – Pillar 3: Emotional recovery time
31:30 – Pillar 4: Self-trust and confidence
35:00 – Pillar 5: Growth actionability
40:00 – Pillar 6: Social support utilization
49:00 – Real client wins and emotional resilience growth metrics
53:00 – Final encouragement: Be someone who offers three minutes
“Real personal growth is deciding to turn in your victim card and say, ‘No longer. I’m choosing radical responsibility in all areas of my life.” – Kristen Boss
Transcript for episode 236 “Embracing Non-Linear Growth”
Kristen Boss (00:03):
I see you with brand new eyes. No, I’ve never been so sure. Take my this. You are listening to the Kristen Boss podcast. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. As a bestselling author and performance coach, I’m on a mission to share about sustainable and purposeful approaches to both business and life. Each week I bring relevant topics that I believe are necessary to create a life of purpose, significance and meaning. Entrepreneurship is about so much more than growing your bottom line. It’s about who you are becoming in the process and building a life that is truly extraordinary. Entrepreneurship is really just the beginning.
(00:58):
Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Glad to have you back for another week this week. I’m excited to talk about this particular topic and I think it’s going to be a good one no matter what you’re working on, whether it’s business health goals, financial goals, maybe it’s inner relationship goals, communication, you name it. I think if you’re listening to the podcast, some part of you is a growth oriented person and I love that and I think it’s great. I also think there is a lot of growth drama I see people struggle with, especially when it comes to the personal development space and I have a couple thoughts about that. We’re actually going to talk about how to embrace the non-linear part of any type of personal growth and you might be like, yeah, I know it’s not linear, but I’m like, or are you beating yourself up every time you have a perceived setback or things aren’t going as quickly as you think they are, or you’re telling yourself like, oh, I can’t believe I’m here again, or Why am I still dealing with this?
(02:04):
This is without a doubt one of the biggest areas that come up for people that I am consistently coaching on. And speaking of coaching, I’m so excited to be back in the coaching chair that’s going to be in our Sondera life membership where you have access to weekly live coaching. We have a special going on, and so if you join us by November 1st, we’ve got something real special for you. So you can click the link in the show notes. It’s a membership. You can join anytime, but why would you wait? And also you can cancel anytime we don’t lock you in. I know how these things are, but this was kind of the vision I had for how I really wanted to serve people in a broader sense. So let’s talk about how to embrace the nonlinear side of personal growth. Alright, so here’s the thing.
(02:52):
I think the personal growth space is amazing when we use it responsibly. I actually think there are people, and I think this is quite common, who consume personal growth material and never seem to bring about real measurable change in their life. And you might resonate with that. You might be like, yeah, that kind of feels like me. I’m just constantly consuming the material and it feels good in the moment. I feel productive when I’m reading, but I still find myself defaulting to old habits, patterns, these things that I’ve told myself I was going to change and work on for the last decade. Here I am still working on this and I think personal growth only serves us when we use it, when we actually implement and integrate what we’re learning, meaning we’re taking in something and applying it to our day-to-day and we’re willing to get uncomfortable and apply what we’re learning.
(03:55):
But I think so many people love the concept of consuming personal development because it makes us feel like we’re doing something, but if you’re not living your life differently, you’re not really doing anything, maybe you’re just listening to it to feel good, be like, yes, I love personal growth and this is what I like to joke with people. I’m like, do you? Because last I checked, personal growth is so painful, I want to opt out of it most days. That’s how you’re actually doing the work of personal growth is it feels incredibly painful. It feels like you are discovering new parts of yourself that you didn’t realize had been running the show, having to visit hard and painful circumstances and be willing to look at it through a new lens. It’s being willing to take radical responsibility in every area of your life. I think personal growth is deciding to turn in your victim card forever.
(04:50):
Think about that. It’s literally deciding to hand over your victim card and say No longer, I am now choosing to take radical responsibility in all areas of my life, even if it means that I have to own things I don’t think are mine to own. If it means I have to apologize for things, work through things, maybe change who I hang around with. You don’t get to carry the victim card and also say you’re a personal growth enthusiast. You just don’t because personal growth is you saying, clearly there’s some things for me to work on, but a victim mindset is like, I’m here because I am a product of what’s happened to me and I am waiting for life outside of me to change so that I can feel better. And I’m like, well, that is a really miserable way to live constantly waiting for your circumstances to change so you can feel good.
(05:45):
Well, to me, that’s a very helpless way of living. That is why be in the passenger seat when you have this amazing thing called agency where you have free will, you have choice and you get to choose differently. I don’t care how old you are listening to this podcast, I don’t care if you’re 20 and you’ve got your whole life ahead of you or you are nearing retirement and empty nesting, you still have the wonderful ability to write a new chapter in your life. And I think it was, I was just recently at an event and John Maxwell was there and he was talking with his dad, and I guess his dad lived to be 98, and he said that his dad said to him they would meet a lot. I think his dad said to him at the age of 85 or something, he looked at John and said, oh, I still think my best years are ahead of me.
(06:40):
- I mean, who thinks that? Who thinks my best years are still ahead of me? I’ll tell you who thinks that somebody who is truly has a growth oriented mindset and believes as long as we are here on earth, as long as we have breath in our lungs, we have this amazing ability to choose growth. So why do we shy from growth or what is the dark, I’m going to call it the dark side or the shadow side of personal growth. I actually think we can dilute ourself into thinking we’re growing when we’re really just consuming content. I think we can dilute ourselves into thinking, yeah, I have self-awareness, but here’s what I’m going to ask you. Is your awareness leading you to the next step? Is it leading you to do something about it? Because I think we can have awareness and be like, yeah, I know I, I can be short-tempered when things aren’t going my way.
(07:34):
I know I can be rigid in my thinking. I know I can sometimes be harsh with others or I know I struggle to have boundaries. I know I let people walk over me. We say these things like, yes, I know these things about myself, and then that’s the end of the conversation. I’m like, well wait, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. This isn’t in concrete. Although most of our habits and our identity is deeply formed, oh gosh, I know our identities and our stories and our beliefs are roughly formed by the age of eight, but I think it’s our habits and our way of viewing the world. I can’t remember the age. I want to say it’s in our early twenties, but that’s not to say it is unchangeable and permanent. You have this amazing thing in your brain called neuroplasticity, which means your brain is elastic, it can change, it can be rewired no matter how old you are.
(08:26):
And so thank God for that because I would be, if I still had the brain that was locked in my brain at 24, 25 years old, God help us all, God help us all. Now, does that person still show up from time to time? Yes, of course, of course. But the dark side of personal growth is I think when we walk around with awareness and helplessness at the same time, this is who I am. I know these things about myself and I am helpless to change those things about myself. Again, remember how I said real personal growth is deciding to turn in your victim card? It’s just deciding to do that. And so when you turn in your victim card, you’re also saying, I will no longer be helpless to the life I was handed, the cards I was handed. And I will fully admit, we all have been handed a deck of cards, so to speak, of our life and that is the home you were born into, your economic status, your upbringing, where the resources that were available to you and some of us didn’t have the deck stacked.
(09:38):
How do I want to put it? It wasn’t as stacked against us as I think some people have. Some people the deck is stacked against them. Does that excuse them from or does that be like, oh, therefore they can’t change their life. In fact, I think people that overcome insurmountable odds are extraordinary to me, and I have so much admiration from them that they had to overcome so much to get to where they are. And so we can’t fight against the deck we were handed, but we have agency to decide, okay, these are the cards I was handed. What’s the best hand I can play with and how am I going to show up with what I was handed? Or I see other people that are so angry with the deck they’ve been handed and be like, this is my life because this is what I was handed and therefore this is how it always has to be.
(10:25):
Again, that’s the victim card, whereas, okay, how can I take responsibility? What can I change? Yes, this is the story I was born into, but what story do I want to create for myself? I don’t have to stay in that story. I can create a new story. This is where we’re changing generational trauma, a generational cycles, and it takes brave hard work to do that and it can be done. Is it easy? No. Is it painful? A thousand percent, yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely. Absolutely. So the dark side of personal development is I think when we use either we use the concepts and the material to create a false sense of self-awareness. Like, oh yeah, I’m doing my work. I’m aware, but then it doesn’t bleed into any area of our life to create positive change. We walk around with the awareness, but we still choose helplessness or we don’t do anything to change it.
(11:23):
That’s dark side number one. Dark side number two is I believe when we weaponize personal growth against ourselves, and that would look like seeing yourself not as a human to be loved, but as a project to be fixed, as a never ending self-improvement project, not from a place of I love myself enough to not let myself get caught up in these patterns that don’t serve me, my goals, my family, my loved ones. That is the compassionate way to approach personal growth. But then there I believe is the shame induced approach to personal growth of here’s all the things I hate about myself. Here’s what I’m sick of, and here’s what I don’t love about myself. And I believe if I fix all these things about myself, then I can believe I am worthy of good things, worthy of love, worthy of even liking myself, and that is weaponizing personal growth against yourself.
(12:23):
Because I will tell you, growth is always, growth is forever. There is no such thing as arriving. So if you tie your worthiness to a sense of arrival in your personal development journey, you are setting yourself up for always feeling like you can never measure up, and the personal growth will start to feel like the shame stick that you beat yourself with and being like, okay, cool. Let me listen to this next podcast. I think I suck at relationships and I’m going to listen to all the things I’m doing wrong, and then I’m going to try and fix these things about myself. Cool. And now, okay, I think I have a better sense of that. Okay. What’s the next thing about myself that I want to improve that I don’t like? Oh, but this is where I hear people and when they have, they’re consuming all this content and they’re like, these are all the things I want to fix about myself versus these are the things because I love myself and want to honor myself in a way that serves myself and those around me to the best impact and best potentials possible.
(13:25):
These are the things I want to work on versus I believe I’m so broken that this is the path to fix me before I even go further. Do you hear what I’m saying? Do you sense the nuance in this? That one is approaching from self-compassion and love and grace and curiosity, and one is approaching this work, shame, unworthiness and lack. And I think the biggest one is shame, because this is what I see people do. I see them embark on their personal growth journey, and I actually see them become more depressed with time. The more content they consumed, the more depressed they become and the more helpless they feel because they’re not using it as a way to feed themselves. They use it as a way to here’s the measuring stick that I’m always using against myself to never feel like I’m enough and I’m always this project and I’m never arriving.
(14:19):
If that is you, I’m inviting you right now to put down the shamest stick and we are going to completely shift how you view personal growth because this is not, again, something about it tells me you have poor metrics or you have the wrong idea of what the role of personal growth is meant to do in our life. It’s meant to sharpen us, bring a sense of awareness that we didn’t have prior to go about and do these things and be like, okay, here’s what I can do differently. And we’re always growing. We never arrive. I think a lot of people interpersonal growth thinking, I’m going to start this, and then there’s going to be this end goal to where I finally, the person I become instead of this is a lifelong journey and I get to love the person I’m becoming every messy step of the way.
(15:11):
Do you hear the difference between that because one person is making worthiness and love available to them immediately, like, I’m doing this because I love and care for myself because I want to do these things versus the person that’s like, once I fix all these things about myself, then I can believe I’m worthy. Do you see how the person that approaches personal growth from that place just causes a lot of pain, right? This is where I see people actually get depressed or they think something is wrong with them or they think, I can never be fixed. I’m always the problem, and I see this happen for people. I see them spiral and they think something must be wrong with me. Absolutely nothing is wrong with you. You are a human being. You are a human who’s trying to figure out this really complex thing called life.
(15:55):
You’re trying to undo and rewire a lifetime of stories that have been either handed to you or that you have been telling yourself that your brain has been taking your whole life and taking every single circumstance and instance and taking it through that filter of your belief system and saying, oh, well, this is what that means, and here’s evidence of why we believe these stories about ourselves and why it’s true. And of course it’s hard. Of course it’s painful, but I want to invite you into this really messy thing. This is why I’m saying this has to be about embracing the nonlinear journey of personal growth because we have this idea that there is a start point and there is an end point. And how that looks is this constant upward trend and to the right upwards and to the right, always and forever. Okay?
(16:45):
First thing I want to acknowledge for you is I was talking to a client of mine and I just said, do you realize in her mind she’s like, I’m either failing or I’m succeeding. I’m like, that is awful because now you have, I was like, that sounds like a really painfully emotional experience or reality to set yourself up in if you’re either winning or losing. There is no like what about the season? What about integrating? What about learning? What about calibrating? What about resting? I was trying to introduce all these in-between phases that are so necessary between success and failure. And what’s interesting is she was viewing failure as the antithesis of success instead of, no, they are integrated things. In order to have success, you have to fail. But she was like, no success. There’s only success and I have to avoid failure at all costs.
(17:38):
Instead of like, no, I’m going to integrate every failure on my path to success. That’s really what it is. But anyway, she was like, that was it. I’m either performing and crushing or I suck and I lose, and I’m like, wow, that’s no way to live. And she’s like, yeah, I’m kind of seeing that, but this is what I had to say, and this is what I want to say to you too. The idea of a constant linear journey of growth that is never ending defies natural law, and you’re going to be like, what? It defies natural law. I want you to look at nature. Show me in nature where something is always and forever growing and there is not a season of rest. Look at flowers. I mean, I think I’ve shared this before. I grew up in California. I didn’t really get to experience seasons.
(18:29):
I was in the inland area and it was hot, and we had summer, almost summer, not quite summer and spring. Those were the seasons I got. So I never really got to experience watching, and I’m looking out my window right now. I’m seeing all the colors and the leaves falling from trees. I didn’t get to experience that in California and then seeing nothing and being like, oh my gosh, everything is dead and dying and is really ugly. I will never forget my first spring, and I was awestruck, awestruck that new life could burst forth from something that looked dead. So I was just say, listen, show me where in nature, something just never stops growing. And I actually heard this statement, I think it was when I was away at a retreat. They said, the only thing in nature that never stops growing, the only natural thing in nature that never stops growing is cancer.
(19:24):
Think about that. And so we have this cancerous view of how we think growth should look, and we deny the parts of us that actually need healing, resting, reflecting, integrating all of those really, really important parts than just grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. I mean, I want you to think about that, but here’s what, and you might be like, yeah, I know this. I’d be like, okay, but here’s the thing. I can’t tell you how many times I’m coaching somebody and they’re mad at themselves when they’re not in a growing season, and it’s almost like they remember a growing season. They’re like, oh yeah, that season was so good. And they’re like, but I’m not growing anymore and therefore it’s backwards and something’s gone terribly wrong. I’m like, or this is an integrating season, or this is a healing season. Or I am like, do you not think growth is available?
(20:18):
You’re not going to enter into a new growing season after the season of rest and integration. And so I find that people get upset with themselves when, let me give you an example. This is how you know don’t have a healthy view of personal growth is when you feel shame and anger or a sense of worthlessness when an old wound comes up again and you think to yourself, I’ve already dealt with that. Why am I dealing with this again? Because we tend to think of our wounds, our stories, the things that are painful as like this. Fix it once. Fix it and forget it. It’s like, okay, fix it. Stop bleeding. That’s great. Move on, wipe our hands of the lesson, and we move on. We’re like, thanks for that lesson. Moving on. What growth actually is, is there is this version of you. I’m going to use me for an example.
(21:16):
I’m 40, and so I can’t tell. So the 40-year-old version of me that processes a wound from my childhood is going to be processing it at a completely different layer because I have different life experience. I have new levels of wisdom, new levels of awareness. I’ve healed aspects of the story, but I get to look at it from a new lens in this new season of life. So every time you visit a pattern, a wound or something you were working on changing, you are not the same person revisiting that pattern. Now, however, I do feel like I need to nuance this. However, if you are constantly finding yourself back in the same situation and it’s replaying itself over and over again, that my friend is a pattern that you have not yet broken in your life and there’s no shame around that, it’s just time for you to evaluate and look at, hold on here.
(22:12):
I’m finding that I am the common denominator with all of these stories. I’m the common denominator here of why this keeps happening in my life. What in me do I need to work on? So I stop repeating this pattern. There’s the pattern. There’s actually deciding I’m going to break the pattern. And then there is when you decide to break the pattern, then you actually uncover the story, the story that you are carrying or a belief system that you were carrying that actually created all these ways you make decisions, your behaviors, how you show up in certain circumstances. So the pattern is kind of like that’s the symptom. You’re like, here’s the symptom. The root cause is the story. If you’re only ever treating the symptom, you’re forever going to be treating the symptom and you’re going to find yourself in those repeat patterns wondering, why do I keep doing this?
(22:58):
Well, because we haven’t gotten to the root cause. The root cause is something we actually do return to over and over and over again. But we get to do it from a new level of awareness every time we revisit the story. Because as you go through your life, you’ll come into a new circumstance, a new situation, and you will find it point back to the story that your life’s work is to continue to heal and love about yourself. So when that thing comes up, you’re going to be like, oh, wait, hold on, this is kind of bringing up my story again. And now you have the opportunity to be like, okay, from this new season and this version of me who’s done this work, now I have the opportunity to address this story at a new layer. I always like to think of Shrek or Shreks talking to donkey, and he’s like, Ogers are like onions.
(23:52):
They have layers, and I think our stories are onions as well. We have layers to our story, and every challenge or trial or circumstance gives us the opportunity to look at the layer and heal it, and we keep eventually, I think we’re always just going to be healing different layers. I also appreciate that donkey’s, like does that have to be onions? No one likes onions. Couldn’t it be a parfait? So however you want to view it, your story is a parfait or it’s onions. I think there’s a lot of layers, so I’m going to say onions. So all that to say is if you are weaponizing your personal growth journey against yourself to the point where you are, you’re like, I shouldn’t be here. Why am I still learning this lesson? I can’t believe I’m still people pleasing. Okay, people pleasing is the symptom. And you can keep trying to be like, ah, I got to keep people I know I need to set better boundaries.
(24:48):
And there’s your self-awareness, and I know this keeps coming up. And then you see the patterns of it, and then finally you are like, okay, I want to understand the story that has me consistently running to the behavior of people pleasing. That is what I mean. And yes, and so somebody with a healthier view of personal development is like, Hey, I know this about myself. I know I get lost in people pleasing. I’m really afraid to speak my truth or put in a boundary or tell someone how I feel or those things. I know that about myself. I also know, okay, so that’s someone that’s aware of their kind of how they default to certain things when they’re feeling unsafe in the world, or the story then is I know that comes from being in a home where the home always felt chaotic, or I had a parent that had really unpredictable moods and I took it upon myself in order to feel safe in the world.
(25:52):
I made it my job to be the peacemaker in the house. So that was how I felt safe, and that is how I continue to feel safe. So that’s somebody that’s familiar with their story. So now let me give you an example. So now they’re in a circumstance where they’re noticing they want to people please, they’re noticing suddenly they feel sick with the idea of putting in a boundary, and that is somebody that’s like, okay, ooh, I’m seeing my pattern. I’m seeing my default to want to do this. Okay, I know it comes from this story. What about myself? Do I need to remember in this moment to view this circumstance differently, to approach this circumstance differently versus the person that is using development like a shamest stick? The conversation they’re having with themselves is, I can’t believe I’m still people pleasing. Why can’t I just not put in a boundary?
(26:52):
What is with me? Why am I here again? Here I am again, people pleasing and not standing up for myself. It’s like, well, oh, hold on, hold on. Why are we being so unkind to ourselves? Again, that’s somebody who had a linear idea of what they thought growth meant. So they’re like, oh, that means now that I fixed that about myself, I’m always going to be great at setting boundaries. No, it’s probably going to be your work for the rest of your life, but it’s going to be become easier with time and practice. That’s the thing. That’s why I tell people with hustle for me, they’re like, oh, have you cured it? I was like, cured it. I have had to make peace with knowing that how I am wired in the world, the easiest place for me to default to feel worthiness or if I feel fear or uncertainty is to hustle.
(27:46):
My life’s work will be to notice when that’s happening and bring myself back to a place of groundedness and calm. It is not about me curing myself of hustle and never having the desire for it ever again. It’s understanding that part of myself and being aware of it when it kicks in and bringing myself back to center. That is personal growth friends, but we think personal growth is eradicating the problem. We think personal growth is like, I’m never going to struggle with that again. I’m like, where were we promised that? And I do think that is kind of how it’s touted on social media. Fix these things about yourself, and it’s like, I hate how, I don’t know. I feel like the personal growth space has kind of been hijacked by prosperity. Personal growth is prosperity, and prosperity is personal growth in the sense of, I’m going to call it wealth.
(28:37):
If it’s like you see these people where they’re getting out of their private jets and talking about personal growth, it’s like, okay, that’s not always the outcome. The outcome. It’s not about getting a private jet. It’s about who am I with my family? Who am I with my friends? What’s my sense of fulfillment when I’m not working? Do I see myself as a human being instead of a human doing? That’s the work, that’s the reward, and it’s way less sexy. I mean, it’d be easy for me to sell you a personal growth program where I’m like, Hey, listen, and you know what? I’ll tell you this. Shame sells. If I get you to believe you’re broken and I can convince you that I’m going to fix you, then you’re going to buy it. I’m never going to invite people into that narrative. I think that’s disgusting.
(29:21):
I want to invite people into like, Hey, here’s this amazing complex thing called life. You are a human that is prone to operating in a certain way, and the greatest gift you can give yourself is bringing awareness to that and giving yourself the tools to use when your story comes up so that you can bring back to center so that you can show up better in your life, whether that’s in your work, your family, your relationships, your career goals, and are there tangible goals to that thing? Yes, absolutely. But I refuse to buy into the shame narrative of, and this is in the marketing space. Here’s all the reasons why you’re broken, and I’m going to make you feel really bad about why you’re broken, and then I’m going to tell you why my methodology is the only thing that’s going to fix you, and then I’m going to give you a massive sense of urgency and scarcity so that you have to buy from me because I’ve evoked so much fear from you.
(30:19):
I hate that I won’t do it. I’m not a part of it. But if you’re like, I want to learn these tools, I want to understand myself better, and I want to be in a non-toxic growth journey with myself where I’m not using it as a shame stick to beat myself up with. If I want to approach my life in layers and have radically honest conversations with myself that I’ve never done before, then yeah, come and see what we’re about over at this thing we built. It’s called Sondera, right? But I just want to invite you into having a more compassionate conversation with yourself when it comes to personal growth and understanding. It is not linear. Sometimes it is 10 steps forwards and 11 steps back. And I will tell you right now, I am walking and living this out myself. I am not here being like, Hey, what does it do?
(31:10):
As I say, not as I do. It’s like, no, no. I’m walking this path myself by every metric. If I was to only measure success and progress with data sheets from my business or spreadsheets that tell me profits and losses and earnings and new customers and all those things, all I would be creating is misery for myself. But I have learned one of the greatest gifts I’ve learned in the last year is to find metrics that go beyond fulfillment, metrics and happiness metrics that go beyond something on a spreadsheet about what my business is doing. And so when I look at my husband and I, we were away last weekend and we did this marriage survey and we scored it, and it was just like I cried. I was out of all the things I could have scored in my life, the fact that my marriage is up there, A feels like a miracle.
(32:10):
It feels like the greatest gift of my life, and man, that’s fulfillment. And I’m not sure I would’ve been able to see that, touch that or feel that or understand that at this level had everything not broken a year ago, had I not burned it all down, now am I telling you, Hey, you have to burn it all down in order to shape your view of fulfillment. No, that’s part of my story. And if I can prevent you from burning it down, I will. But some things we do need to burn down, but I think the biggest thing I burned down was my idea of, I think I was unknowingly in a mindset of linear trajectory to where when it didn’t look linear, my sense of self started to crumble in a nonw season. And so now I’m like, I have a great sense of self. I’m like, Hey, I’m not in a winning season, but here I’m showing up. I like these conversations. I love serving people and I have fulfillment, and I think there’s something really beautiful about when we opt out of the dark side of personal development that is the fix. It always onwards and upwards.
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There’s a destination, no friends. The destination is the journey. That’s what it is. It is a constant becoming process. It is evolutionary. It is not linear, it is evolutionary. We are constantly evolving forever and ever. It is a circle. It is not a line. I think I saw once, it was like a spiral going upwards, and that feels true. And so I just want to offer you a different way of approaching your personal growth that’s filled with compassion, filled with a kinder lens of your humanity. And if you’re tired of symptomatically trying to treat your life, then I would invite you into Sondera and what we offer because we actually do go to the root cause. That’s why I changed my business. I was like, I want to get to the root cause of why people are defaulting to patterns they know aren’t serving them. I actually want to give them tools. I want to help them. And so friends, I hope this episode was of value to you. We’ve got more exciting announcements coming your way, but I hope you have a really fantastic week. If you haven’t left a review, please do so. Also, if you want to shout this out on Instagram, invite people to give a listen. That might enjoy it. Go ahead and do that. Otherwise, we will catch you in the next episode.
(34:47):
That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Listen, if you love what you heard here today, I would love for you to leave a real quick rating and a review. This helps the show get discovered by new people. Be sure to take a screenshot of today’s episode and shout us out on Instagram. We’ll shout you right back out. If you’d like to find additional resources or discover how to work with me, head to www.kristenboss.com starts right.
