Once upon a time, I picked up the phone to call a colleague with a quick question about a project we were working on together.
Less than an hour later, I hung up the phone with an agreement for that colleague to become my first paid coaching client.
I didn’t see it coming. I wasn’t trying to make it happen.
And yet, in under an hour, my coaching business went from an idea to a reality.
Until it happened, though, my brain would have told me that was impossible.
Well, not exactly impossible….just utterly not worth thinking about or considering.
What kind of crazy person would get their hopes up like that? How delusional would I need to be to imagine such a delightful surprise landing in my lap like that?
Not crazy, not delusional. Just optimistic and actively in charge of my brain.
The truth is, the future is very malleable and completely impossible to predict. The current trajectory could change at any moment.
But if we ever do let ourselves consider this fact, we usually only allow ourselves to think of the bad possibilities, like a car crash or a nuclear war.
What if we put our energy into believing our stuckness or bad luck or dissatisfaction could change instantly, too?
Here’s why that’s hard: your brain is a prediction machine, and it builds its predictions almost entirely from the past.
If things have felt stuck or draining for a while, your brain files that under this is just how it is.
It expects more of the same—not out of pessimism, but out of efficiency.
Hope feels risky. Staying resigned feels safe.
For high achievers especially, years of pushing through things that felt off trains your nervous system to conclude: this is just the cost of the life I’ve built.
But the phone can ring at any moment.
I had a client who, in a single session, did one exercise and suddenly saw that she’d been recreating the same dynamic with her husband for years—a loop neither of them could see from inside it.
She tried something different that week. The results surprised her. Not months later. Right away.
Her brain had been predicting the same outcome so reliably that she’d stopped noticing there were other moves available.
One new experience—real, felt, not just understood intellectually—and the prediction shifted.
That’s a big part of what coaching does.
It gives you new experiences of yourself—and that’s what actually rewrites the prediction.
It also reminds you, again and again, that change is possible. Because your brain won’t do that on its own.
Keeping yourself out of the doom loop takes effort, persistence, and skill.
It’s vulnerable work to hold your mind open to good possibilities before you have any proof they’re coming.
Coaching helps you build that proof—one small experience at a time—and stay open long enough for it to arrive.
Just like I picked up the phone one afternoon expecting a five-minute conversation—and hung up with my first paying client.
I didn’t plan it. I didn’t force it. I just showed up, and something was ready to shift.
Something in you might be ready too.
If you’re curious what that shift could look like for you, here are two great ways to find out:
👉 Join me for my free webinar, Success Beyond Reason, on April 9. We’ll go deep on what’s actually keeping high achievers stuck—and what it looks like to move into real alignment. Register here.
👉 Or schedule a free consultation and let’s talk about what’s ready to change in your life. Just hit reply and we’ll find a time.
It could change any moment. Why not make it this one?
Optimistically yours,
Rachel
PS – You don’t have to believe anything will change forever—just be open to the possibility that it could shift sooner than you think. Join me April 9 and see what becomes visible.
