Hellooo friends new and old!

I was chatting the other day with a beloved client who had just overcome a major challenge in her new job. We were both practically panting with relief, because it had been such a wild ride.

The stakes were high, the pressure was intense, and it took every bit of persistence, ferocity, nimbleness, and diplomacy she had to make it through triumphantly.

But she DID it!

And now holy moly she is so tired.

So I was doing my usual life coach thing of urging her to celebrate the win, take a breath, let her nervous system settle down out of crisis mode… you know, irritating life coachy stuff.

She agreed to book a massage and a day off, but then she said something offhandedly that stopped me in my tracks:

“Still. I’d so much rather be solving these problems than the ones I was solving three years ago.”

Oh my gosh. Yes. Oh yes.

Because three years ago, we both remembered how she was struggling to get out of the door with her kids each day. How she always felt behind no matter how hard she worked. How her finances were a scary tangle she didn’t even want to look at. How she played small at work, mostly trying to stay invisible, because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to keep up with a bigger role.

And now here she is.

I don’t want to minimize everything that she did to get where she is now; it’s a total hero journey and an incredible story. But I do know where it all started.

It began with an uncluttered space to do her own work.

I remember the first time she set up her desk JUST for her. How she breathed, “It’s beautiful. I can’t believe it’s just for me.”

It was like she had created a sacred portal for herself, a threshold that took her somewhere new. She had set a galvanizing kind of energy in motion, and it took her to incredible places.

Her story might sound wild, but I’ve seen it happen again and again for my students and clients: how big outward changes start with a tiny change that seems laughably inconsequential.

Like an uncluttered space to do her work.

Or a space for her eyes to rest on something beautiful.

Or an outfit that turns her into a fearless warrior.

Or a little bit of mental breathing room because the bills were on autopay.

Or a tiny surge of forward momentum because she knew exactly what on her to-do list was most important to do (and what wasn’t) on an ordinary Tuesday at 2:37pm.

Or how just making one tiny but scary phone call can lift a month of dread.

Or how a jar of daffodils on a nightstand can shift someone’s whole sense of what they deserve in a relationship.

Stories like these are why I run my program, The Queen Sweep every year. Because I know that big changes start with small things. I know that when we have more space in our homes and calendars and minds, we create more bandwidth to do the things that truly matter to us.

I bet you have things that call to you. Dreams, hopes, people you adore, injustices that infuriate you, projects you know you’re meant to do… if you could just find the time.

Imagine if every smart, creative, kind, talented woman you know had the time and the energy to pour into those things. What if we could all stop drowning in busyness and actually do the things we long to do? What if we put our energies into solving the really interesting problems? What kind of ripple effect could we create?

I think we’d make our world more beautiful together.

(Maybe you’re rolling your eyes right now, because it’s all you can do to just keep swimming in a life that feels utterly overwhelming.

I get it. I’ve been there. I’ve got you.

Friend, let’s build you a boat, one tiny step at a time.)

What I know beyond a doubt is that we can always start right where we are– in fact that’s the only place to start.

Right here. In our own lives, however messy or beautiful or both.