By Penny Power – Business Author & Human-Centred Speaker
This week, I’ve been reflecting on transformation, that quiet, insistent call many of us feel at this time of year. We set goals, make plans, and map our intentions… and yet the real work isn’t in the planning.
It’s in the becoming.
A few weeks ago, I received some words that went straight into my heart. I was already in the midst of my own personal transformation, navigating emotions I didn’t expect, and these words felt like a hand on my back, steadying, comforting, guiding.
I knew immediately that they weren’t just for me.
They were for anyone standing at the edge of their next chapter.
Here is the quote I printed and placed where I see it every day:
“We cannot think our way into transformation.
We must live ourselves into it, often weeping our way through it.”
Those words held me.
They still do.
Because here is the truth most of us don’t say out loud:
- Transformation hurts.
- It requires courage
- It asks us to release parts of ourselves we’ve outgrown.
- And it rarely arrives through logic.
Thinking is useful, but overthinking is torture.
We don’t think ourselves into change.
We feel our way into it.
Often, the moment that triggers transformation is unexpectedly painful. For me, it came through a personal event that shook me far more deeply than it “should” have. That shock sent me into therapy, where I uncovered childhood pain that my 14-year-old self never had the tools to process. It had simply waited… patiently… until a moment of change exposed the crack.
Not facing it would have cost me something precious.
Transformation demanded my attention. It worked, I have awoken a new sense of emotional freedom that demanded me to grow and transform.
Let me break down the quote in the way I’ve come to understand it:
1. “We cannot think our way into transformation.”
Because transformation isn’t intellectual, it’s emotional.
It asks us to feel:
• Where is the pain actually coming from?
• Why does it hurt so much?
• What am I afraid of losing… or finally allowing?
• What old belief is being confronted?
Transformation arrives when we stop resisting and start listening.
2. “We must live ourselves into it.”
Thinking keeps us frozen.
Living, acting, feeling, choosing, stepping, is what shifts us.
Transformation asks for motion:
One brave conversation.
One new boundary.
One small daily practice.
One decision that honours who you are becoming.
You cannot transform from the sidelines.
Life requires participation.
3. “Often weeping our way through it.”
Yes, tears.
Not weakness, but release.
Tears are evidence that something matters deeply.
Crying is brave.
Crying is movement.
Crying is proof that your heart is involved.
Non-action is the real danger.
Pain ignored becomes identity.
Pain understood becomes evolution.
So as you ponder this with me, may I gently ask you:
- How do you want to grow this year?
- Which parts of that growth require you to transform?
- Is it an inner shift, a new skill, a new direction… or perhaps all three entwined?
Look back at your life for a moment.
You have already transformed countless times, through love, through loss, through ambition, through adversity.
You have survived every version of change you’ve lived through.
And you will survive, and grow from, this one too.
Transformation is rarely graceful.
But it is always purposeful.
I wish you a beautiful future, and I feel honoured to walk beside you in it.
If you find yourself weeping your way into your transformation, please know…
You are not alone.
With love,
Penny x
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