The question my client kept coming back to
September 2026
Most of us can answer it about someone we love, and go quiet on ourselves.
A client I've been working with came into our session this week and told me which piece of her homework had stayed with her most.
It wasn't the hardest question on the page. It was this one:
Who am I when I'm at my best?
It's a deceptively simple thing to ask. Most of us can answer it about someone we love without pausing, and go quiet when it's turned back on us.
What I see again and again
Ask the women I work with for specifics about someone they love and it pours out — the way he lights up talking about his work, how she is in a room full of people who need her. Ask them about themselves and they reach for the average day. Or the worst one. Or how they compare to someone who looks further along.
The 3am version sounds like: everyone else seems to know what they're doing, and I should have this figured out by now.
But who am I at my best has a real answer. You've lived it. There have been days — maybe whole seasons — when you were unmistakably yourself and it was working.
That version of you is the one worth planning around. It's the standard that belongs to you, instead of the ones you borrowed from other people.
This is part of the work I take clients through, and I do it myself. I've settled on three words for who I am at my best: decisive, resilient, courageous. For each one I wrote a line about what it looks like on an ordinary day. Mine for resilient is “I recover from setbacks with self-trust and choose growth instead of retreat.” It sits as a phone reminder that comes up early, before the inbox, before the noise. Some mornings it's the whole difference in how the day goes.
A small shift this week
Pick your three words. Write what each one looks like when you're living it. Put them somewhere you'll see them first thing tomorrow.
One more thing I've been sitting with
Someone sent me a Wendell Berry poem this week called “The Real Work.” The line I keep returning to:
“The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
Berry's point is that not knowing what to do next, or which way to go, often means you've arrived at the part that matters. The not-knowing is where the work starts.
That doesn't mean sitting still in it. The stream keeps moving. Clarity comes from staying in the current and trying things, not from waiting on the bank for the water to go still. And knowing who you are at your best is how you tell which direction is worth moving in.
Who are you when you're at your best, and what would change if you measured by that?
I'd love to hear your answer. Email me at tricia@bloombeyondco.com.
Designed with intention,
Tricia
P.S. — What's Next Workshop
If this is the season to look squarely at what's next, I'm running the What's Next Workshop online on Tuesday, September 23, 6:30–8:00pm Central. A small group, ninety minutes, $49. We work through the same three tools I use in my coaching: the Clarity Compass, the Pause, and the 5-Minute Clarity Reset.
Registration open through September 22.
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