Have you ever felt like you were on the verge of the business or life you really want, but somehow you couldn’t quite get there?
You can see what you want. You may even know what you need to do next. You have ideas, experience, and ambition, yet something keeps you from moving forward with the momentum you know you are capable of creating.
I call this verge energy: that strange place where you can feel that change is close, but you haven’t quite crossed the threshold.
I received a review from a coaching client recently that brought me right back to this idea. She ended it with these words:
“For anyone on the verge of becoming their healthier self, professionally and personally, I wholeheartedly recommend partnering with Carolyn.”
On the verge.
Those words have a special meaning for me because years ago, when I first started coaching, I named my practice On the Verge Coaching. Eventually I had to give up the name because another coaching business had one that was too similar, but I never really gave up the idea behind it.
After years of working with business owners and experiencing this transformation in my own life, I have come to believe that being on the verge is a very real stage of growth.
Why Can You Feel Stuck Even When You Know What You Want?
Many business owners assume that if they know what they want and understand what they need to do, they should be able to simply do it.
Human beings are more complicated than that.
We have habits, beliefs, fears, responsibilities, conditioning, relationships, identities, and old patterns that influence our decisions. We can understand what we should do intellectually while another part of us continues to resist doing it.
This is one of the reasons intelligent, capable business owners can feel stuck even when they have plenty of ideas and information.
There is a concept in physics that offers an interesting metaphor for this. An object at rest tends to remain at rest unless a sufficient force acts upon it. We call this inertia.
Human beings have our own version of inertia.
Sometimes the obstacle to business growth isn’t a lack of strategy. It is the invisible resistance underneath the strategy.
You may know you need to raise your prices but fear disappointing people. You may want to become more visible but worry about being judged. You may need better boundaries with clients but have spent your life being rewarded for being helpful and accommodating. You may want a bigger business while simultaneously believing that growing it will require sacrificing your freedom, energy, or relationships.
Until we become aware of those competing beliefs, we can spend enormous amounts of energy trying to push ourselves forward while another part of us is quietly applying the brakes.
Awareness Can Be the Beginning of Business Growth
This is why I believe awareness is one of the most important habits we can develop as business owners.
When you are stuck, the most useful question is not always, “What should I do next?”
Sometimes it is:
“What is keeping me from doing what I already know I want to do?”
That question takes us underneath strategy and into the patterns influencing our strategy.
For me, coaching became one of the catalytic forces that helped me see those patterns.
Before coaching, my life was good. That was actually part of what made change difficult. There was no dramatic crisis forcing me to do something different. I simply had this persistent feeling that there was more.
Eventually, I had to admit something to myself that felt almost frightening:
I wanted more. A lot more.
I wanted a bigger life than the one I had allowed myself to imagine.
Even admitting that felt dangerous. There was a part of me that believed wanting too much was somehow tempting fate. Who was I to want all of that? Who was I to believe I could actually have it?
I think many business owners carry some version of that question.
What If the Business You Want Feels Too Big?
We look at people doing extraordinary things and assume there must be something different about them. They are more talented, more confident, luckier, braver, better connected, or somehow destined for greatness in a way that we are not.
But what if greatness isn’t reserved for a chosen few?
What if there are simply people who eventually become willing to move toward what they want?
That movement doesn’t always begin with confidence.
Sometimes it begins with awareness.
Sometimes it begins with finally seeing the belief or pattern that has quietly been keeping you in place.
Sometimes it begins when another person can see the blind spot you cannot yet see for yourself.
And sometimes the next step is surprisingly small. The important thing is that it creates movement.
Why Coaching Can Help You Get Unstuck
This is one of the reasons coaching can be so powerful when you feel stuck in your business.
A good coach isn’t there simply to give you another list of things to do. Coaching can help you identify the resistance, assumptions, habits, boundaries, and blind spots influencing the decisions you are already trying to make.
My client’s review meant so much to me because she described exactly this kind of transformation.
She talked about working through layers of resistance, self judgment, and fear that had kept her from creating the boundaries she needed to thrive. She described learning to distinguish between being generous and being over generous, between what is fair and what asks too much of her.
Those may sound like subtle shifts, but subtle shifts can change the trajectory of a business and a life.
A boundary changes.
A relationship changes.
A decision changes.
Energy that was constantly being spent managing everyone else becomes available for something new. You trust yourself a little more. You make the decision you have been postponing. You stop waiting for permission.
And movement creates more movement.
This Is Why I Coach
I know this transformation because I have experienced it myself, and I have had the privilege of watching it happen in my clients.
There is something extraordinary about witnessing a person begin to recognize what they are capable of. The business or life that once seemed too big starts to feel possible. The thing they have been circling for months or years finally begins to move.
This is why I coach.
I don’t coach because I have to. I coach because I want to.
I love that moment when awareness becomes movement, when someone who has been standing on the verge begins to cross the threshold.
One of my coaches, Lindsey Wilson, says something that has stayed with me: only you can make it happen or not happen.
Support can help us see. Coaching can challenge our assumptions. Someone can hold up a mirror, ask the question we have been avoiding, or help us recognize the pattern that has been quietly running our lives.
Ultimately, though, there is a moment when we have to choose movement.
What Is Keeping You on the Verge?
If you feel stuck in your business right now, consider asking yourself these questions:
- What do I already know I want?
- What decision or action have I been circling but avoiding?
- What am I afraid might happen if I actually move forward?
- What belief, boundary, habit, or responsibility might be creating resistance?
- What is one next step that would create movement?
That last question matters.
You do not necessarily need to know the entire path forward. Sometimes you need enough awareness to identify the thing keeping you stuck and enough courage to take one meaningful next step.
So perhaps the question isn’t whether you are capable of creating the business or life you really want.
Perhaps the more interesting question is:
What is it going to take to move your inertia?
What would create enough momentum for you to stop being almost there and start moving toward the thing you already know you want?
Because maybe being on the verge isn’t evidence that you haven’t made it.
Maybe it is the place where everything begins.