The distance between deciding and doing
This is the first summer of my life that I've had unfettered access to a pool. No calling someone up or waiting for an invite, no paying an entrance fee. I can look at the calendar, the weather, the kids who need to move their energetic little bodies, and just grab the pool bag and go.
I'm surprised by how much I love this. As a native New Englander with predominantly Swedish heritage, I wasn't exactly built for the sun. In fact, when we were househunting a decade ago, I ruled out a house with a pool on the spot.
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I laughed drafting this — wow, how novel, pools are great? Why didn't anyone say anything?
A big part of it is that my kids are finally strong swimmers. The years of swim lessons that ended in tears, the early Saturday morning practices — we're getting the payoff. I can watch them cannonball off the diving board and practice their backflips with friends while I sit in the shade with my book and Moleskine.
My current notebook is filled with pages exploring themes across my clients. What made them seek me out? What have they accomplished? What's still getting in their way? What's made the biggest difference?
So my brain was primed when I came across this Derek Sivers quote on SwissMiss:
The distance between deciding and doing is the single most reliable predictor of whether your life will be extraordinary or ordinary. Not talent, not circumstances, not even the quality of your decisions — but how quickly you collapse the space between intention and reality. Think of this gap as a kind of friction coefficient on your existence: the smaller it is, the more of your internal force actually translates into external motion. When you can move from 'I should do this' to physically doing it within hours instead of weeks, you're not just accomplishing more — you're operating in a fundamentally different mode of being where your thoughts have immediate consequences in the world, where your inner life and outer life are in a constant, tight conversation.
The way I yelped when I read that!
This is at the crux of my work: I help my clients collapse timelines and jump into new ones.
This is the biggest theme in why people come to me. You know what you want. You watch yourself not getting there — or not getting there fast enough — and you wonder why.
That's what we uncover in coaching.
Here's what I actually know about this.
Most people think they're not getting what they want because they don't know the how. I hear things like:
"I need to get certified first." "I need to take a writing class." "I need to make the right connections."
OK, maybe? Sure, those things might be helpful.
They're also not the real reason.
The real reason is something deeper, sneakier, and way more confronting to look at.
I'm not talking about "I'm actually afraid of success." That's been the root cause in exactly zero of my coaching conversations.
What I've realized about this work is that love is holding up a big umbrella that makes it safe to do the real excavation. Maybe it doesn't sound professional, but I love every one of my clients. I love you, because you are a divine being who signed up for earth school.
And because love is at the core, nothing scares me and I don't judge you. From where I sit, it's pure admiration.
Admiration for the part of you who keeps you safe. Admiration for the part of you who gets excited about one project after another. Admiration for the part of you who needs a good long time to marinate before moving.
It also doesn't mean we need to give those parts the keys to the car.
The parts that keep you safe, that marinate forever, that chase every shiny object — they're not the enemy. They don't need to be bulldozed or silenced. They need to be witnessed. Seen. Appreciated for what they've been doing.
And then gently relieved of the wheel.
Because underneath all of them is your essential self — the part who felt that first pull toward something bigger. Who knew, before the fear kicked in, exactly what she wanted. That's who we're coaching. That's who does the driving.
If this is resonating — if some part of you recognized herself in these words — that's your essential self signaling. Reply to this email and let's talk. I have a handful of July sessions available at a friends and family rate of $150, and I'd love for one of them to be yours.
