iamsepalavi

One of the most meaningful shifts in my life has been realizing that difficult experiences are not always interruptions. More often than not, they end up shaping us in ways that only become clear with hindsight.

When I was younger, I viewed challenges as something separate from the vision I was working toward. If plans unraveled or circumstances became complicated, my instinct was to treat those moments as detours rather than part of the path itself.

But looking back, many of the experiences that shaped me as a leader arrived in forms I never would have chosen. They also seemed to arrive at moments when I felt I had little interest in adding one more thing to my plate.

What stands out to me now is that each of those moments expanded my capacity by asking me to become someone different from the person who first stepped onto the path. When I think about resilience, I think about the ability to stay connected to where I am headed, even when life introduces a few unexpected plot twists. Or, on a special occasion, rewrites the entire script.

These days, when something unexpected shows up, I find myself wondering what is being developed through the experience rather than how quickly I can move past it. That one shift has changed the way I work, lead, and relate to myself when things feel uncertain.

This is one of the many conversations we have in COR™. The next cohort begins in August, and there are a 2 spaces remaining for those who feel drawn to explore this work more deeply. The investment for the program also increases permanently on Sunday.

Feel free to DM me or check out the link in bio.

Insight can change your perspective in a moment, but integrating it into your life takes time. That is one of the reasons I created COR™.

I wanted to build a space where people had the time, structure, and support to integrate what they were learning so that meaningful change could become part of everyday life instead of remaining a powerful experience they looked back on.

The next cohort begins in mid-August and will be the final COR™ cohort I offer this year. If you have been feeling called to deepen your relationship with yourself, strengthen your capacity as a leader, and do this work alongside a small group of people who are equally committed to their own growth, I would love to have you in the room.

I also want to share that the introductory pricing I’ve offered for the first two cohorts comes to an end on Sunday. I chose to begin with a lower investment because I wanted this work to be as accessible as possible while the program found its footing. After Sunday, the investment will increase permanently.

If you’ve been considering COR™, you can learn more through the link in bio, or reach out to me.

You can grieve and still be grateful. Gratitude can sit with pain, with exhaustion, with a year that genuinely knocked you down.

What it doesn’t sit well with is suffering.

Not because the pain isn’t real, but because suffering was never the pain itself. It’s what we lay on top of it: this shouldn’t be happening, I can’t handle this, something is wrong.

That layer is what keeps the nervous system too on edge for gratitude to land, no matter how many good things are actually in front of you.

Most gratitude practices skip this part, which is probably why so much of it doesn’t stick.

We’ve been sold a version that lives between the journals and the daily lists, another task finished before the coffee’s even done.

That was never the real thing. Gratitude is a state, not a task, and the body has to actually be in it rather than the mind moving through the motions of naming three things and moving on.

Here’s what most people miss though: this is about more than gratitude. It’s about attention.

In a world engineered to keep you reaching for the next thing, deciding where you place yours is one of the most consequential choices you make all day, whether you’re aware you’re making it or not.

Gratitude, felt in the body instead of just thought about, is one of the most accessible ways to take that choice back.

When it’s real, the nervous system actually settles, and the resistance under the pain begins to soften, even if the pain itself doesn’t move yet. For a moment, your attention lands on what’s actually here instead of scanning for what’s still missing.

The more you train it to notice what’s genuinely good right now, the easier it becomes to find on its own, without being told to look.

You’re not just shifting how you feel in a moment. You’re changing what you perceive, and what you perceive is what you move toward next.

Where your attention goes, energy flows.

Gratitude was never about denying what’s hard. It’s about pointing your attention, on purpose, toward what you want more of, even while the hard thing is still there.

I have been thinking lately about how quickly we move on from the things we once wanted.

A goal is reached, a milestone arrives, a new chapter opens, and before we have fully taken it in, our attention has already moved to what is next. The wanting tends to be louder than the having.

The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, the point where the light reaches its fullest before it begins to turn. It always asks me to slow down a little longer than I otherwise would and actually be with what is here, rather than rushing toward what comes after. The takeaway for me is that self-leadership is not only about creating what comes next. It is also about recognizing and honouring what has already been built.

So if there is a milestone you have not let yourself fully take in, this might be the week to give it a little more room to land.

Recently I was on a rooftop in Vancouver with two of my closest friends, brittney kerr-smith and Katie Stevens, and I found myself sitting with the weight of time in the best possible way.

We met in 2004, and somehow, after decades of life, change, growth, and rebuilding, we were standing there together as Forty Under 40 alumni.

What moved me most was not the recognition itself, but how much we have witnessed in each other over the years. The pivots, the difficult seasons, the risks, the becoming. There is something incredibly rare about friendships that continue to expand alongside the people within them.

Being in that room with these women felt like a full circle moment. Not because everything is complete, but because of what becomes possible when people quietly keep showing up for the work they are here to do.

Very grateful for this chapter, this community, and the people I have grown alongside.

95% of your behaviour is unconscious.

Most of the decisions you make each day are not coming from deliberate thought, but from patterns that were formed long before you were old enough to question them.

And those patterns do not only live in the mind. They live in the nervous system, in the body, in the reactions that happen before conscious awareness has time to step in. Which is why thinking your way into change often only takes people so far.

I remember realizing this viscerally during a ten day silent meditation retreat. No phone, no conversation, nothing to distract me. And instead of becoming quiet, my mind became louder. It was generating work emails, imagined exchanges, responses to situations that were not even happening. Just automatic momentum continuing to run.
That is the unobserved mind doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The work is not to shame it or get rid of it, but to become aware enough to notice it without immediately becoming it.

The moment there is even a small amount of space between you and the pattern, something changes. You are no longer fully identified with the reaction; you can observe it instead. And in that space, real choice begins.