The question nobody asks at thresholds

The Simplicity Protocol Issue 1

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I was coaching a CTO who thought he needed better clients.

His wife had recently died. He was raising his college-aged daughter as a widower. And a layoff had forced him to stop working and start fresh.

When we started working together, he kept hitting walls. Job applications going nowhere. Every familiar route led to increased frustration. He'd go 90% of the way down one path and then just... stop. Something wasn't quite right, but he couldn't name it.

I asked a different question: "Who are you becoming in this next season of your life?"

Silence. 

Then: “I don’t know.” 

The real answer emerged a couple of weeks later: 

"I want to travel with my daughter to every continent before she graduates. I want her to see the world before she starts her career and has her own independent life."

Last year, he took his first vacation in 17 years. This year, he's planning a diving trip in the Philippines and a multi-city European tour. All with his daughter.

He thought he needed better work opportunities. What he actually needed was a business model that put family first.

Perhaps a greater vision has been calling to you too. But you've been so focused on the “how” that you didn't allow yourself to dream of what could be.

Here's what I've noticed across hundreds of professional transitions: 

Everyone asks, "What's next?" 

Almost nobody asks, "Who am I becoming?"

We expect careers to follow a linear path that makes sense. Each role building logically on the last one. Clear progression. Recognizable titles.

It's a false expectation that creates tremendous disappointment.

Sometimes what's really happening isn't a career change at all. It's an identity initiation. The person you were can't build what you're being called to create.

My mentor Dan Sullivan tells a story about why people who relocate to new countries often become so successful. Each of them had to consciously choose what they were leaving behind as they moved toward their bigger future.

There’s power in that reflection: What do I need to prune to grow?

Most people don't do this. They drag the old identity into the new life and wonder why execution feels impossible.

I did this when I left Los Angeles at 18 for college in Philadelphia. I packed what mattered and left the rest. A fresh start was what I wanted most. Room to grow without my parents’ direct influence.

The CTO I was coaching had a clear vision of what wasn't working, but he had his priorities in the wrong order.

The old version of him, the one who hadn't fully confronted mortality and the preciousness of life, kept trying to optimize the career path. He needed to release that identity first and start from first principles.

What do I really want? Why does it matter now?

When those answers became clear, the business model that supports them became obvious.

This is the vision-execution gap most leaders miss. You can have a perfect strategy and still fail to execute if the wrong person is trying to implement it.

How can you spot this in yourself? This is where your capable, brilliant brain is completely unhelpful.

I've learned to observe somatic signals instead. Your body knows something doesn't fit before your brain can articulate why.

This shows up as: 

• Frustration with the next logical step
• Dissatisfaction even when you're 90% of the way to execution
• Feelings of apathy, or emotional distance from work or people you used to enjoy
• Spinning and trying several different approaches in a burst of energy

Try this experiment this week:

Set a timer for 20 minutes. Get a clean sheet of paper.

Step one: From first principles, ignoring what's "logical" based on your resume or what makes sense to others, write down what you actually want right now. Why does it matter to you?

Let yourself brain dump. No editing. No judgment.

Step two: Go below the neck. Put your hand on your heart or your stomach. Let your body respond to what you just wrote. Ask: What else? What's REALLY most important?

Allow whatever wants to emerge. Keep going until the vision feels satisfying and true to you. 

Step three: Now that you have a compelling vision, write down 10 things you'd consciously leave behind to move toward that vision. Habits, obligations, beliefs, old identities, commitments that served who you were but not who you're becoming. 

Pick the easiest or fastest one to release right now. Then do ONE thing this week to make it real: send the email, cancel the commitment, delete it from your calendar, or simply and unapologetically stop (my favorite).

This exercise is about giving yourself space to recognize whether you're trying to optimize a path forward or whether you're in an identity initiation that requires releasing old parts of you first.

Sometimes you discover that what you've been trying to execute doesn't actually align with who you're becoming. This insight alone can save you months of spinning.

This connects to the Vision-Execution Gap if you want to go deeper.

With aloha,
Marissa

P.S. This is Issue #1 of The Simplicity Protocol. 

Was this valuable? What questions are you wondering about? What are you navigating right now? Hit reply and let me know. I read everything.