The Attention is in the Details…

I had a client recently talk about how the word “courage” was a value she held in the highest esteem. However, she'd recently read that courage is doing something while being afraid – doing it anyway. Bravery, on the other hand, is similar but without the fear component. She told me she now wants to be brave, not courageous. She wants to skip over courage because she doesn't want to feel fear anymore.

I sat with that for a moment, recognizing something so familiar in her words. That deep desire to just... skip ahead. To fast-forward through the hard parts.

I remember being a pre-teen and longing to be an adult so badly, not wanting to go through the trials and tribulations of becoming a teen and then a young adult. I wanted to skip over all that in the worst way and simply become a respected adult with all its independence and perks I perceived. The acne, the awkward social moments, the heartbreaks, the confusion about who I was becoming – I wanted none of it. Just give me the good stuff, please.

I have a dear friend who became single in the last few years and has been having the worst luck dating in this new mid-life stage of hers. She's exhausted from the getting-to-know-you stage only to discover the other person isn't a right match, is still married, or is lying about something fundamental. She wants to skip this dating stage so desperately and just find "the one" and settle down again. She's done with the small talk, the disappointments, the hope followed by letdown. She just wants to arrive at the destination.

And here we are at the beginning of a new year, and I'm guessing some of you are feeling this too. Maybe you're tired of being in the messy middle of your own journey. Maybe you've set intentions around alignment this year – wanting your life to feel more cohesive, more authentic, more true to who you really are. And maybe, if you're really honest with yourself, you're hoping there's a shortcut to get there.

The Thing About Skipping Steps

All three of these scenarios – my client, my teenage self, my friend – want to skip over the important stuff. And here's the plot twist: the important stuff is actually the small stuff.

What do I mean by small stuff? I mean the day-to-day grind of development. The mundane trudgery of life lessons. It's the scraped knees and bruised hearts. It's the learning-along-the-way kind of development, the revisiting of old patterns and trying different approaches so you can develop multiple skills and tools to use. Because if we don't, we develop only one dominant strategy that we end up overusing until it loses its effectiveness. We find ourselves stuck, repeating history, making the same mistakes, encountering the same obstacles that are actually there to teach us something.

My client wanting to skip to bravery and eliminate fear? If she never identifies why she has so much fear, what it looks like in her body and in her heart, if she doesn't get to know it intimately, she may never move beyond it. She needs to do the work of recognizing what is true fear, meant to keep her safe, versus the fear her inner critic creates to keep her small. Without that discernment, she'll never know when she's in actual danger versus when she's just protecting her ego from a little bruising. For her, the magic is in the details of the baby steps she's taking to reacquaint herself with herself.

As a teenager, if I'd somehow skipped to adulthood, I wouldn't have learned the necessary interpersonal relationship skills that develop throughout our teen years. I wouldn't have experienced dealing with the politics that come up in group settings. I wouldn't have learned about consequences and developed healthy independence, appropriate hesitation, and the critical thinking skills that emerge alongside the development of the frontal cortex before our early twenties. All those awkward moments? They were building something essential.

My beautiful-hearted friend struggling with dating? If she skips over the lessons that dating can teach her, she might find herself in another unhappy long-term relationship because she hasn't had time to notice how her own attachment patterns might be attracting partners who aren't aligned with what she truly wants. She could end up in a codependent situation because she hasn't spent time practicing healthy boundary-setting. She won't have had the space to get in touch with what she actually wants in this stage of her life, so she might compromise the most important parts of herself just to not be alone. She might miss the red flags that surface during dating – the ones that could help her avoid landing in a relationship with an unhealthy or unsafe partner.

Where Curiosity Comes In

So here's where I want to introduce something that might shift how we think about all of this: curiosity.

What if, instead of wanting to skip the hard parts, we got curious about them?

What if my client, instead of trying to banish fear, got curious about it? "Oh, hello fear. Where do you live in my body? What are you trying to protect? When did you first show up in my life? What would you need to feel safer?" This isn't about wallowing in fear or letting it run the show. It's about getting to know it well enough to discern its purpose and decide whether it's serving her or holding her back.

What if I, as that pre-teen, had been able to approach adolescence with even a shred of curiosity instead of dread? "I wonder what I'll learn about myself when I have to navigate this friendship conflict? I'm curious what it feels like when my body changes. I wonder who I'm becoming?" (Okay, that's probably asking a lot of a twelve-year-old, but you get the idea.)

What if my friend could bring curiosity to her dating journey? "I'm curious what this experience is teaching me about what I really need in a partner. I wonder what this disappointment is revealing about my own patterns. I'm curious what boundaries I'm learning to set that I never knew I needed."

Curiosity creates space. It creates a little breathing room between us and our experience. It allows us to be in the process without drowning in it. And here's the thing about curiosity – it's the antidote to rushing. You can't be genuinely curious about something while simultaneously trying to skip past it.

Alignment Happens in the Details

This year, I continue to think a lot about alignment. Not the hustle-culture version where you force yourself into some idealized vision of success, but real alignment – where your outside life reflects your inside truth. Where you're living in harmony with your actual values, not the ones you think you should have.

And what I'm learning is this: alignment doesn't happen in one big dramatic shift. It happens in the small stuff. The tiny steps. The mundane practice of making small, healthy, consistent choices when no one is looking.

Healthy growth – both within ourselves and with others – happens in relationships. Healthy personal development is all about improving the relationship we have with ourselves. And healthy relationship growth has to happen in relationships with others.

And relationship stuff? It's all about attention to the details. It's noticing the micro-moments. It's the practice of showing up, again and again, even when it's boring or uncomfortable or scary. It's getting curious about why you react the way you do, what triggers you, what lights you up, and what shuts you down.

The New Year Invitation

So as we move through these early days of the year, here's what I want to offer you: What if this is the year you don't skip anything?

What if this is the year you get curious about the very things you'd rather rush past?

What if alignment isn't about fixing yourself or arriving at some perfect destination, but about paying attention to the small stuff along the way? About noticing what's true for you right now, even if it's messy or uncomfortable or not where you thought you'd be?

What if the goal isn't to be fearless, but to be curious about your fear?

What if the goal isn't to skip the hard parts, but to mine them for the wisdom they're trying to give you?

What if the goal isn't to arrive, but to be fully present for the journey?

Because here's what I know: the small stuff is where we actually live. The big moments are few and far between. But the daily practice of choosing curiosity over judgment, presence over rushing, alignment over performance – that's available to us every single day.

That's where the real transformation happens. In the details. In the tiny steps. In the mundane moments when we choose to stay present with ourselves and get curious about what's here instead of wishing we were somewhere else.

So this year, maybe the most radical thing we can do is slow down. Pay attention. Get curious. And trust that the small stuff is actually the big stuff in disguise.