It wasn’t until someone asked me to sit in a genuine circle — no chairperson, no agenda, no clear winner — that I understood how deeply I’d absorbed a different way of organizing the world.

I had grown up climbing. Not aggressively — I was never particularly competitive in the obvious ways — but quietly, consistently, until it became so natural I stopped noticing I was doing it. There were levels. Some people above you, some below, and the goal was to move upward.

Sitting in that circle felt different. There was no obvious person to look to. No one at the head of the table. I remember glancing around the room, wondering who was going to take charge. No one did. At first it felt awkward. Then something subtler happened. I stopped waiting for permission to speak and started listening for what wanted to emerge between us.

Slowly it dawned on me that authority wasn’t located in a position at all. It was emerging from the quality of the conversation itself.

For people like us — people who have spent years exposed to ladder logic while quietly knowing something else was true — that realization can arrive like relief and disorientation at the same time. Because it means the discomfort you’ve been feeling in conventional business spaces wasn’t confusion about what you wanted. It was clarity about what you didn’t.

You Were Never Meant to Climb This Particular Ladder

You absorb hierarchy the way you absorb a language when you grow up surrounded by it — without noticing, until it quietly shapes how you see almost everything. School reinforced it. Workplaces reinforced it. Maybe your family did too.

Then you build a practice that grows out of who you really are.

And when it comes time to market it, something keeps feeling wrong.

It isn’t you.

It’s the shape.

That’s the realization that changed everything for me.

What It Feels Like

Have you ever rewritten an article for the tenth time…

…only to discover that every version sounded competent but none of them sounded like you?

Or followed the marketing advice exactly…

…and somehow felt further away from your own work?

The words weren’t wrong.

The strategy wasn’t necessarily wrong.

But something inside you kept saying,

“This isn’t how I want to build my practice.”

Instead of pushing that feeling aside, what if you became curious about it?

Because most marketing advice is built for a different shape.

It’s built for the ladder.

Find your positioning. Claim your authority.

Stand out. Rank higher.

Your work may be asking for something different.

A ladder assumes someone is ahead and someone is behind.

A circle asks something different. Not “Who’s on top?” but “What’s trying to emerge between us?”

If your work grows through relationship, the ladder was never going to feel like home.

Choosing a Different Shape Doesn’t Make the Work More Comfortable

M. Scott Peck noticed that genuine community almost always passes through an uncomfortable stage. Before people become honest, they become awkward. The easy harmony disappears.

Most of us assume something has gone wrong. Peck suggested the opposite. Often, that’s the first sign that something real is beginning.

I think this happens in business too. We begin by trying to sound like everyone else because it feels safer. Then, sooner or later, the careful version stops working. That’s usually the moment we think something has gone wrong.

It may actually be the moment something more authentic is trying to emerge.

What Becomes Possible on the Other Side of Discomfort

When the careful version gives way to the honest one, you become visible in a way that wasn’t possible before. Not the polished version. The real one.

And from that real knowing, something different becomes possible — not just in relationships, but in the work itself.

I’ve seen this in practitioners who finally stopped trying to sound like conventional coaches and started speaking from what they actually knew. The message became clearer. Not because it was better crafted, but because it was finally in resonance with what they were actually doing. The right clients — the ones the work was genuinely here to serve — began to find them.

This is not a marketing strategy. It’s what happens when you stop building in the shape of the ladder and start building in the shape that actually fits.

You Don’t Need More Certainty. You Need a Better Relationship with Uncertainty.

I want to be clear about something: I don’t have a system that makes all of this easy. I’m not going to hand you a circle in a box.

What I have is a long relationship with exactly this kind of uncertainty — the uncertainty of building something that doesn’t fit conventional templates, of sitting in the discomfort long enough for something true to emerge rather than reaching for the nearest structure to make it go away.

That’s not a weakness. It’s a capacity. And it’s one that translates directly into how you build a practice, how you hold space for clients, and how you find your way through the seasons when nothing seems to be working.

The circle is a skill. It’s also a practice. It demands presence without performance, honesty without dominance, and a willingness to stay through the discomfort instead of reaching for the ladder that promises a cleaner view.

The practitioners I most admire haven’t learned to control every conversation.

They’ve learned to participate in conversations where something real can emerge.

That is what’s possible for you too.

Jan Anderson
Your Healing Business
Jan@YourHealingBusiness.com

P.S. Where, in your business, do you notice yourself climbing a ladder that no longer fits? I’d love to hear what’s alive for you in this right now. Leave a comment below, or if you’re ready to explore what circle-building looks like inside your own practice, let’s chat.