When the Old Strategy Breaks - Literally: Embracing Vertical Development Through Life's Interruptions

There was a time I thought I had it dialed in. Workshops? Booked. Frameworks? Tight. Feedback loops? Running. Results? Delivered.

I was doing everything a successful leader "should" do. And yet—it felt off.

I looked successful. But inside, something felt off. It felt empty. Like I was living a version of myself that didn’t fit anymore—but I hadn’t admitted it yet. Or maybe I had… and just didn’t want to face it.

That sense of emptiness is the signal. Not of failure, but of friction. It's what adult development theory calls reaching the limit of your current meaning-making system.

You can’t grow into who you’re becoming by clinging to the strategies that built who you’ve been.

But I tried.

Until my body intervened.

Ligaments torn. Surgery. Cancelled launches. Cancelled meetings. Cancelled me.

That breakdown became a crucible.

A developmental interruption.

We call this a "heat experience." The kind of life event that disrupts your autopilot, shakes your sense of control, and invites a deeper question:

Who am I when I'm not performing?

In vertical development, this is the beginning of the climb. Not up, but inward.

You're not just adding skills (horizontal growth). 

You're evolving the very system that interprets, decides, feels, and leads. You’re expanding your capacity for complexity, contradiction, and deep inner alignment.

At the Achiever stage (Stage 4), we become masters of output, efficiency, and drive. But if you stay there too long, you start breaking, not because you're weak, but because your current self can no longer hold the complexity of what your soul knows is next.

I wasn’t fired.

I had to fire myself—from the job of being the person I thought I needed to be.

That’s not a resignation. That’s initiation.

True vertical growth takes three things:

• The Gut — You feel it. In your bones. You know the cost of not changing is too high. For me, it took a physical collapse. But for many, it starts with quiet burnout, secret exhaustion, or the question no one else hears: "Is this really it?"

• The Head and Heart — It's not just strategy. It's emotional. It requires thinking differently about what you feel, and feeling into what you've been afraid to think. It means meeting fear, grief, and loss—not as enemies, but as guides.

• The Hand — You act. You test new ways of being. You challenge the assumptions holding you in place. You stop trying to optimize the old, and start practicing the new. Not for performance, but for insight.

This is what people don’t tell you: transformation isn’t tidy. It’s not glamorous. It’s liminal.

You're not who you were. You're not yet who you're becoming.

But that in-between space? It’s sacred.

It’s the fire that forges depth.

So if you're there, in the space where your old identity is fading, and the new one hasn't fully arrived, stay there.

Don’t rush it.

Feel it.

Because in the silence between who you were and who you will be, your most honest leadership is already taking shape.

And this time, it won’t be a performance.

It will be you.

Marjana Laibacher Rogelj, Companion in your Evolution Journey