The Cracking Point
For when the future you counted on disappears
One crisp fall afternoon, four acorns went skydiving out of a tree.
Two were snatched up by squirrels, mid-air.
Top talent.
The dream.
The other two hit the ground. Hard.
A test of resilience, they said.
A way to build character, they said.
Days passed.
Then came the leaves, rain, and snow.
And yet, they just lay there,
unclaimed and unchosen.
“I thought this was the part where someone chose us,” they whispered.
“We did everything right. Why are we still here?”
Just as they began giving up hope, one caught a gust of wind and tumbled backward.
“Finally!”
Thunk. Right into a ditch.
“Ughhh. Just decompose me already.”
“Life happens happens for you, not to you,” said the one in the sun.
“Bro. I’m rotting,” said the dud in the mud, whining to a silent ditch until it lost its appeal.
Suddenly, the muddy dud felt a crack.
Not emotionally. Literally.
And everything he knew about who he was collapsed.
It did not feel good.
Not at first.
But underneath that feeling was something else.
A strange relief.
As if the pressure had finally told the truth.
The crack often comes for us in the moments we mistake for the end.
The divorce.
The layoff.
The betrayal.
The season where everything piles up and your old ways simply won’t move you forward anymore.
It feels like rock bottom. The ditch with no way out.
When we meet this moment, somewhere along the way, we learn that the crack is
not a test of strength, but a demand for honesty.
The crack asks you to release the narratives that keep you braced.
The ones built on blame, resentment, guilt, or anger.
The ones that once protected you but now keep you stuck.
The crack makes surrender unavoidable.
What used to hold life together wasn’t going to work, and trying to hold on to what was already gone only made it worse.
So eventually, what was left of the old him stopped resisting.
And in that acceptance, the definitions of
right and wrong,
good and bad,
began to soften.
He didn’t know what would come next.
The pressure to become something recognizable and follow the path he was expected to follow had finally gone quiet.
The shell that once organized his world was breaking down.
From the outside it looked like decay.
From the inside it felt like space.
What was never meant to last could not hold.
As soon as we see the strength in the struggle,
the lesson in the adversity,
or the release that can only come from letting go of story
the old frame breaks
and a reframe becomes possible.
Bringing the Reframe to Your Team
Most teams right now are stuck in a frame that change is hard and they’re already behind. My job is to show you that’s a frame problem, not a team problem.
The 9-Minute Reframe is a 90-minute experience that turns a room full of people playing it safe into a team that thinks boldly together. By the end, they have a tool they can use anytime they want to move faster than the moment.
Learn More about Reframe · Connect with me on LinkedIn