✦ Passion, Patience & Progress — Fire and Breath in Balance ✦

Passion gives us fire to begin. Patience gives us breath to endure. Progress is the dance between the two.

A Month of Firsts

August brimmed with firsts. Some were planned, others unfolded unexpectedly, yet each one stretched me in its own way.

I had the joy of sharing how coaching presence might be reimagined in homes and schools especially for our young children. I learned alongside many practitioners, each with their own innovative approaches to nurturing flourishing kids. Listening to their creativity reminded me that passion is not just fuel for personal ambition; it is a shared current that sparks possibility in communities.

And during one of the evenings, I found myself standing at the centre of Esplanade's recital studio beside a youth, “acting” as her emcee. I had written a short introduction with three key attributes that captured her spirit, and I delivered it slowly, deliberately. I looked at her mother in the audience, making sure she too could hear her daughter’s story held up in light. That night surprised me: I discovered that I enjoyed the stage not for performance, but for the chance to honor someone else’s voice.

Every week, I met with undergraduates from different disciplines to discuss how healthier habits (communication, perspectives, etc.) could enhance physical and mental wellbeing. What began as a classroom session often transformed into a circle of shared reflection. One student’s courage to speak invited another to offer a different angle, and soon the room filled with perspectives bouncing, layering, expanding. I left those sessions wishing every student could return weekly not just to learn strategies, but to leave each time knowing themselves a little better.

And then there were the journaling circles I facilitated. An intimate spaces where pen on paper unlocked truths that participants rarely voice aloud. Each workshop ended with a longing in me: a wish to create more of these circles, more often, because the depth they opened felt both fragile and necessary.

The Tension Beneath the Surface

And yet, as vibrant as these experiences were, my business dashboard told another story: numbers flat, momentum quiet. There were moments I caught myself asking, Had I reached stagnation?

It was tempting to equate silence with failure. But sitting with the question revealed something else. What looked like stillness on the surface was, in fact, renewal beneath.

Passion was alive. Patience was being tested. And progress was unfolding quietly, in ways not yet visible.

Passion: The Spark of Why

Leadership thinker Simon Sinek reminds us: “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” Passion is our “why”, the spark that ignites purpose, creativity, and resilience.

In August, passion showed up in many forms: in the thrill of co-creating with practitioners, in the pride of amplifying a youth’s story, in the laughter and candor of student circles, in the quiet breakthroughs of journaling sessions. Each moment reminded me that passion is not about constant intensity, it is about staying connected to why we began.

Patience: The Breath that Sustains

But passion, as we know, is not enough. Left unchecked, it can flare and fade.

Here, the voice of Thích Nhất Hạnh, the Vietnamese Zen master who lived and taught across cultures, offers an anchor: “Patience means to bear with. It is one of the most wonderful practices, and it protects us from suffering.”

Patience is not waiting idly for change. It is bearing with and staying steady in the face of ambiguity, showing up even when results aren’t immediate, trusting that growth sometimes moves invisibly.

August tested my patience. It asked me to see value beyond business numbers, to notice the subtle but profound shifts happening in people I worked with, and in myself.

Progress: Quiet but Real

Progress is often imagined as forward momentum: measurable, linear, undeniable. But in reality, it often arrives as something quieter: roots growing beneath the soil, foundations forming unseen, perspectives deepening before action emerges.

Looking back, August was anything but stagnant. Progress was there in how children’s voices were lifted, in how a youth and her mother shared a moment of recognition, in how undergraduates grew braver in dialogue, and in how journaling circles seeded a longing for more.

This is progress too — not in metrics, but in meaning.

A Thread for Reflection

Over the past months, I often end my monthly micro-coaching moment newsletter with gentle prompts to support readers to reflect. If you’ve carried them, perhaps now is the time to look back and see if threads connect; if answers you gave earlier might weave into new patterns.

And this month, I’ll leave you with just one more:

Where in your life might progress already be unfolding quietly, even if it hasn’t yet taken visible form?

Fire and Breath

Passion gives us fire to begin. Patience gives us breath to endure. Progress is the dance between the two, sometimes visible, often hidden, always moving us forward in ways we may only recognize later.

As we step into a new season, may you carry both fire and breath with you.