I am fortunate that I get to consistently work with people who want to become better. They want to elevate their lives, their leaders, and their impact.
When I help people to elevate, I consistently observe (and I have felt this personally) that there are forces that are holding people down at their current level. In fact, after giving this some thought, I have identified that there are four common forces that hold people back from stepping into their best selves.
For some people, there is just one force pinning them down, and for others, there are all four.
Regardless, if you want to step up and elevate in your life, leadership, or impact, you need to recognize that there are current forces holding you back. And, you need to bust through those forces in order to step up.
Let’s go through these forces, and in doing so, I’ll explain why traditional development efforts don’t work, and what you need to do instead. And, at the end, I’ll offer up some options for how I can support you in your becoming better journey.
Let’s get into them.
1. Short-Term Survival Mode
The first invisible force is short-term survival mode.
On the surface, it looks like:
- Pressure to hit the next target or milestone
- Pressure to maintain your current financial status or lifestyle
- A constant sense that you can’t slow down or step back or you will fall behind
Underneath, the story often sounds like: “If I don’t keep producing at this level, I’m not safe.”
From this place, it becomes very hard to:
- Make bold, long-term decisions
- Invest in your future self rather than just protecting your current self
- Say “no” to good opportunities so you can pursue the best ones
Traditional development usually tries to make you more effective inside survival mode: better time management, better prioritization, better productivity. Helpful, but limited. You become more efficient at running the same pattern.
Vertical development coaching works at a deeper level. It surfaces the fears, assumptions, and identity attachments driving the pressure, and helps you distinguish between real risk and perceived threat to your ego or security. As your internal operating system upgrades, your questions shift from “How do I keep all of this going?” to “What is the future I actually want to create, and who do I need to become to create it?”
2. Fear of Discomfort and Emotional Exposure
The second force is our fear of discomfort and emotional exposure.
This shows up when:
- You avoid hard conversations because you don’t want conflict
- You hold back ideas because you fear criticism or looking foolish
- You stay in familiar roles, even when they no longer fit, because the unknown feels too risky
It’s not just that discomfort feels unpleasant. At a deeper level, it can feel dangerous: “If I’m exposed, if I fail, if I don’t look like I have it together, people will see I’m not enough.”
Traditional development usually responds with tactics: feedback models, conversation scripts, confidence tips. Again, these can help, but they don’t fundamentally change your relationship with discomfort and vulnerability.
Vertical development expands your capacity to be with discomfort rather than avoid it. It means working directly with the emotions you tend to resist—shame, fear, uncertainty—and the meanings you attach to them. Over time, you become someone who can step into uncertainty, visibility, and stretch experiences without being hijacked by them. We have got to build courage, not just create a safer environment for ourselves.
3. Attachment to Identity and Status
The third invisible force is attachment to identity and status—who you believe you are and what you believe makes you valuable.
This might sound like:
- “This is the only way I can be successful.”
- “I’m the one people rely on. I can’t step back.”
- “I’ve built a reputation in this domain; I can’t risk changing directions.”
These identities often brought you early success. The problem is, they can become a prison. When your worth is tangled up with a specific role, level of income, or perception others have of you, change feels like loss, not growth.
Traditional development usually reinforces these identities: become an even better expert, an even more reliable problem-solver, an even higher performer.
Vertical development coaching invites you to see and loosen these identity attachments. We explore questions like:
- “Who am I beyond my role, expertise, or status?”
- “What would I do if my worth wasn’t on the line?”
As you grow vertically, your sense of self becomes less fragile and less dependent on external validation. This opens up space to take bolder risks, shift careers, delegate more, or move into roles that fit who you’re becoming—not just who you’ve been.
4. Need for Control and Certainty
The fourth force is the need for control and certainty.
This shows up when:
- You struggle to delegate because others “won’t do it right”
- You overanalyze decisions and get stuck in endless planning
- You shut down ideas that feel too ambiguous or experimental
The underlying story might be: “If I can’t predict or control the outcome, it’s not safe to move forward.”
In a world that’s increasingly complex and uncertain, this need for control becomes more and more limiting. It narrows your options, constrains your team, and keeps you leading from fear rather than possibility.
Traditional development often gives you more tools to manage and reduce uncertainty: better planning frameworks, risk assessments, decision-making tools. Again, useful—but they don’t change your tolerance for uncertainty.
Vertical development increases your ability to operate effectively in uncertainty. In the Becoming Better Coaching Program, we work on widening your emotional and cognitive window for complexity: learning to trust yourself, your values, your principles, and your ability to respond—even when you can’t control or predict everything. You move from “I need certainty before I act” to “I can act with integrity and wisdom, even in the unknown.”
Becoming Better, Not Just Doing More
These four forces—short-term survival mode, fear of discomfort and emotional exposure, attachment to identity and status, and the need for control and certainty—are not problems you can solve with more tips, tricks, or skills.
They live at the level of your mindset, your identity, and how you make meaning of your world.
That’s why traditional, horizontally-focused development so often leaves people feeling like they’re working hard on themselves, but not truly breaking through.
If you’re ready to move beyond that—to not just add more to who you are, but to become someone who can think, feel, decide, and lead from a higher level of consciousness—that’s the purpose of my Becoming Better Coaching Program.
It’s designed as a vertical development journey: a structured, supportive process for upgrading your internal operating system so these invisible forces no longer quietly run the show.
Because once you transform what’s happening on the inside, everything you do on the outside starts to change.
To learn more about my Becoming Better Coaching Program:
- Check out this website: Becoming Better Coaching Program
- Register for this free informational webinar on 12/2 at 9:00 a.m. PST
