There is an old saying that if we stop to throw stones at every dog that barks at us, we will never reach our destination. I have always liked it because it says something honest about how easily we can be pulled away from what matters.

A careless comment, a little criticism or an unexpected email arrives, and suddenly it has our full attention. Something another person wrote in thirty seconds can occupy our thoughts for the rest of the day.

I know that feeling. You reread the words, wonder what they really meant, and start composing the perfect response in your head. You want to explain yourself, defend your intentions or correct their version of events. For a few moments, replying feels like the most important thing in the world. It rarely is.

This is where differentiation matters.

Differentiation is the ability to remain connected without being consumed. It allows us to listen to another person without letting their anxiety, disappointment, or opinion determine our response. It does not mean becoming cold or detached. It means staying present while holding on to ourselves. We can care deeply about a relationship without reacting to every emotion moving through it.

“Differentiation is the ability to remain connected without being consumed.”

When something triggers me, I try to ask one simple question:

Will this matter in a week?

Quite often, the honest answer is no. When an unwanted comment or an out-of-the-blue email does need a response, I try to leave it for three days. I close the laptop, put the kettle on and allow the dust to settle. Three days later, the response is usually shorter, kinder and clearer. Sometimes I discover that it does not need a response at all.

Like most things worth learning, differentiation grows through practice. Each time we create a little space between what happens and how we respond, that space becomes easier to find the next time.

We cannot control every comment, criticism or barking dog we encounter along the way. We can choose whether to stop and throw the stone.

Sometimes the wisest response is simply to keep walking.

When we moved to the Netherlands in 2003, a wise man said something I have never forgotten: whenever we move somewhere new, there are really two arrivals. At the time, I thought I understood what he meant, but over the years, having lived in a few different countries and known plenty of others who have done the same, I have realised just how true it is.

The first arrival is the obvious one. You turn up at the new house, unload the boxes, work out where everything goes, find the nearest shop, learn the road to work and slowly begin making this strange new place feel a little more familiar. Your address has changed, your furniture is in different rooms and, at least on paper, your life has moved somewhere new. You have physically arrived.

But then, he said, there is another arrival, and this one is much harder to put a date on. It happens quietly.

One day you suddenly realise that things that once seemed strange or took a surprising amount of energy now feel normal and require far less effort. You know where you are going without really thinking about it. You begin to understand some of the little cultural things that used to confuse you. You stop comparing everything with the place you came from. Somehow, without really noticing, you have emotionally arrived.

I have seen how differently that second arrival happens. For some people, it comes within days or weeks. For others, it can take months, even years. We each bring our own story, so there is no simple formula for how quickly somewhere new begins to feel like home.

I have always loved an expression used by the beautiful people of Newfoundland, Canada. They have a lovely phrase for someone who is not originally from there: “come from away.” I love it because it recognises that you can live somewhere, contribute, belong and become part of a place while still carrying somewhere else with you.

The more I have thought about those two arrivals, the more I have realised that they apply to far more than moving countries. All of us keep moving into new places physically and emotionally. We begin new jobs, relationships and seasons of life.

We become parents, grandparents, leaders, carers, retirees or empty nesters. We experience loss, success, disappointment and unexpected opportunity. Sometimes the outside of our life changes very quickly while the inside takes a wee bit longer to catch up.

You can walk into a new office while part of you is still in the old one. You can move house while your heart is still sitting around the kitchen table you left behind. You can take on a new leadership role and still wonder whether you really belong there. The change has happened, but that does not necessarily mean we have fully arrived.

And I wonder if there is another arrival beyond the physical and emotional ones: a spiritual arrival. It is the point where we stop simply recognising that life has changed and begin to notice what the change is doing in us.

Maybe it is making us more patient, less certain, more courageous or simply more open to something we could not see before. For me, that may be the deepest arrival of all.

This is part of what I explore in The Imaginal Coach . Real change is rarely neat.

There is often an in-between space where the old version of us no longer quite fits, but we are not completely sure what is coming next. We have left somewhere, but we have not quite arrived. I don’t think that is necessarily something to fix. It may simply be part of how we become.

The problem is that we are not always very patient with ourselves in these seasons. We assume that because the boxes are unpacked, we should feel at home; because the new role has started, we should feel confident; or because a difficult season has ended, we should have moved on. But people don’t change according to a timetable. Sometimes the deeper parts of us simply need a little longer to catch up.

And the funny thing about the second arrival is that we often only recognise it afterwards. Something that used to feel difficult suddenly doesn’t. A place that felt strange begins to feel normal. A role that once felt too big starts to fit. What used to take lots of thought and energy becomes something we simply do.

Then one day we look around and realise that, somewhere along the way, we arrived.

So perhaps the question this week is not simply, “Where am I going?” but something a little quieter: Where in my life am I still arriving?

Maybe physically you are already there, but emotionally you are still travelling. Maybe emotionally you have settled, but spiritually you are still working out what this new chapter means.

Or perhaps there is an area of your life where you have already had your second arrival and simply haven’t noticed it yet.

There is no correct timetable for arriving. Sometimes it takes a few days. Sometimes it takes a few years. But I find something hopeful in knowing that what feels unfamiliar today will not necessarily always feel that way.

Somewhere along the way, the new road simply becomes the road home.

Many years ago, when I was a young youth worker, I took a small group of teenagers away for a weekend in Donegal. I was coming towards the end of my youth work diploma and, in my own mind at least, I was beginning to feel like I knew what I was doing.

I had prepared all the sessions, had a clear plan for the weekend and felt capable and fit for purpose. It also helped that we were in one of the most beautiful places in the world, with that wild, windswept Donegal landscape around us.

By Sunday morning, though, I felt completely different. The sessions had not gone the way I had hoped; there had been all sorts of mishaps, the young people had messed about most of the weekend and, from my point of view, very little had been taken seriously.

The bus journey home was a quiet one for me. I remember feeling defeated and wondering if I was any good at this.

About ten years later, I bumped into one of the young fellas who had been on that trip. We got chatting and somehow the Donegal weekend came up, and he told me how much fun it had been and thanked me for taking them.

I laughed and told him that I remembered it very differently. I said it had felt like a complete disaster to me and that I had gone home convinced I had failed.

He looked at me and said something I have never forgotten. He said that weekend was one of the first times in his life that he had felt properly seen.

Somewhere in the middle of all the messing about and the sessions that I thought had failed, something had landed with him. He told me it had made him feel that there might be more to his life and that it had shaped him in the years that followed as he became a husband and father.

He also told me he had cancer. He said that, partly because of what had begun for him back then, he now had a deep faith that there was more to life than what we can see.

He died the following year. I have thought about that conversation many times since.

Mostly because I had judged that weekend as a failure, but he hadn’t. I thought I was measuring the weekend by whether the sessions worked. He was measuring it by whether, for perhaps the first time, he felt that his life mattered.

Maybe we do that more often than we realise. We want to know if what we are doing is working, and we want some evidence that it mattered.

Sometimes, if we are being truthful, we want a bit of recognition as well. But a lot of the good we put into the world probably disappears beyond our sight.

It might be a conversation, a bit of encouragement, making someone feel seen, giving someone a chance, or simply showing up when it matters. We may never know what any of it becomes.

And maybe there is something freeing in that. You can simply put some good into the world and not always need to know where it ends up.

Maybe we don’t always get to know what the good we offer becomes. Perhaps our job is simply to keep offering it.

So this week, maybe the question is simply this: What good can you put into the world this week without needing to know the outcome?

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts of summer is that it gives us permission to slow down. In the quiet, we often discover that the deepest work is not around us but within us.

A coaching culture, an imaginal leader, a transformed organization. None of these emerge because we work harder. They emerge when we become different, when we embody a way of leading that awakens potential in others and honors the slow, sacred work of inner change.

This requires a synthesis of soul, science, and systems. It is an invitation to live and lead from wholeness.

Transformation is never a finish line. It is a rhythm.

Perhaps this season is not asking more from you. Perhaps it is simply inviting you to become more fully yourself.

Every ending is another invitation to begin again, to live with more presence, purpose, and hope.

One executive I worked with arrived at our first session with spreadsheets, performance targets, and the hope I’d help her push harder. Initially, we focused on her goals. By the third session, I simply invited her to pause and breathe. She laughed, then the laughter gave way to tears. “I didn’t realize how exhausted I was,” she admitted. 

As our work deepened, she let go of the polished version of herself she thought I wanted to see.

Beneath productivity and perfectionism were procrastination, guilt, and a quiet addiction to distractions like Candy Crush. 

Her frustration wasn’t time management—it was self-worth. 

That’s where true coaching begins: with the identity underneath behavior. When people reconnect with who they are, transformation lasts. From then on, our sessions weren’t about strategy, but about slowing down and listening. Her breakthrough wasn’t a new plan but the rediscovery of her own pace. Companionship, not direction, created the shift.

In every story, the hero never travels alone. Along the road, a guide appears—someone who helps them see what they already carry. Think of Gandalf with Frodo, or Barnabas with Paul. The coach is that companion: wise enough to listen, humble enough to follow, and courageous enough to let the hero lead.

When we see coaching this way, each conversation is part of a pilgrimage. Growth is cyclical, not linear. It includes departure, testing, revelation, and return. Each cycle brings more resilience, humility, and hope, and the journey continues long after coaching ends.