Thresholds, Article 1 · June 2026 · 5 min read
Nine years ago today, I held a brand new coaching certificate in my hands.
I remember thinking, “I did it.”
I had worked toward that certificate for a long time. The courses, the hours, the practice, and the growth in myself I needed in order to earn it. So when I finally stepped across that line, it felt like a finale. A clean, bright ending. There, I thought. Done. I am a certified coach.
I had no idea I was standing at the beginning of everything that would come next.
What I thought was a finish line
June 26, 2018. That was the day. I can still remember the feeling of it, that mix of relief and anticipation, the breath I had been holding finally let go.
What I didn’t understand then, and what I know now, is that the day was not a finish line at all. It was a doorway.
Nine years and more than 4,500 coaching conversations later, I can see it clearly. That first certificate was my Certified Professional Coach (CPC) designation. It eventually led to my Associate Certified Coach (ACC) and later my Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential through the International Coaching Federation. The same year I certified, I quietly launched a business on evenings and weekends so I could log my coaching hours. A little over a year later, in August 2019, I left my corporate career to coach full time.
Each of those was its own door. And not one of them was visible to me on the day I stood there holding that first certificate, thinking I had reached the end of something.
I thought I was celebrating completion. Looking back, I was standing at the beginning.
Doorways are rarely endings
Here is what I have come to believe. Doorways are rarely endings. They are beginnings we do not yet understand.
One doorway leads to another, which leads to another, which opens possibilities you could not have named from where you first stood. When you step through a threshold, you genuinely have no idea what is waiting on the other side. That used to feel like a reason to stay put. Now it feels like the whole point.
A threshold is an invitation into something bigger than your current life. Sometimes the invitation comes from someone else, a person who saw something in you before you saw it in yourself. Sometimes it rises up from inside you, a quiet sense that there is more here than the room you are standing in. Either way, it asks the same thing of you. Are you willing to step through, even though you cannot see the whole way?
That is the part we tend to get wrong. We treat the doorway as a test we have to pass with certainty in hand. It was never that. It is simply an opening. You cross it, and it opens onto the next one.
You often only see the doorway looking back
On the day itself, that certificate did not announce itself as a threshold. It felt like an arrival. A goal met, a box checked, a thing completed.
It is only now, nine years on, that I can look back and see it for what it really was. The doorway did not look like a doorway at the time. It looked like a destination.
I think that is true for most of the meaningful thresholds in a life. We rarely recognize them while we are standing in them. We recognize them later, once we have walked far enough to look back and trace the shape of where one opening led to the next. The friendships, the work, the version of myself I became, so much of it traces back to a moment I thought was an ending.
So if you cannot yet tell whether the moment you are in is a threshold, that is not a failure of insight. That is just how thresholds tend to work.
The staircase you cannot fully see
One of my favorite images for this comes from Harry Potter. There is a moment on the great moving staircase, where the steps shift and rearrange themselves while the characters are still climbing. You do not get to see the whole route before you begin. You step onto the stairs, and the way reveals itself as you move.
That is how it has worked for me. We almost never get the full map before we begin. Clarity often comes through movement, not before it. You decide which way you are going, you take the step, and the next stretch of the staircase tends to appear once you are already climbing.
Somewhere in these nine years, I stopped trying to trade my uncertainty for certainty. I found something quieter instead. A kind of self-trust that lets you take the next step without needing to see the entire path first. Not because I always know how things will turn out. I usually don’t. But I have learned that I can figure it out as I go.
You might be standing at one too
I did not write this only to reflect on my own nine years. I wrote it because I suspect you are standing at a doorway of your own right now.
Maybe it does not look like one yet. Maybe it feels more like a restlessness you cannot quite name. A sense that something in your work, your leadership, or your life is asking for a next step, even if you could not say out loud what that step is. That feeling is easy to dismiss. We tell ourselves it is nothing, that we should be grateful, that we should stay where we are and stop stirring the water.
I would gently offer you a different read. That restlessness may be an invitation. We all have thresholds, places where we sense we are being invited into something bigger than our current life. We almost never get the full map. We simply get to decide whether we are willing to step through.
So here is the question I have been sitting with, and one I would like to offer to you.
What doorway are you standing in front of right now?
An invitation to keep going
You do not have to know it all, have it all, and be it all before you begin. You get to decide what matters to you now, and move toward it, and trust yourself to find your footing along the way.
This is the first in a series of reflections I am calling Thresholds. It is less a program and more a way of thinking out loud about becoming, and about the doorways we hesitate in front of. If this one named something for you, the next reflection, Standing in the Doorway, sits with the harder question underneath this one. If you already know what you want, why is it so difficult to walk through?
For now, I will leave you where these nine years have left me. We almost never get the full map. Step anyway.
If you are standing in front of a doorway that feels difficult to cross, you are welcome to start a conversation. I would love to think alongside you.
Feature photo by 女子 正真 from Pexels
Frequently asked questions
What is a threshold?
A threshold is a moment of invitation into something bigger than your current life. It might be a new role, a decision, a change in direction, or a shift in who you are becoming. It often shows up first as restlessness or a quiet sense that there is more here, before it ever looks like a clear next step.
How do I know if I am actually standing at a threshold?
You often cannot know for certain in the moment, and that is normal. Many thresholds only reveal themselves as thresholds when you look back later. A useful signal is a persistent pull toward something meaningful, paired with hesitation about stepping into it. If a part of your life keeps asking for your attention, it is worth pausing to notice rather than dismissing it.
Do I need to have the whole plan figured out before I begin?
No. We almost never get the full map before we begin. Clarity often comes through movement, and the next part of the path tends to reveal itself once you have taken a step. You get to decide which direction matters to you and move toward it, trusting that you can figure out the details as you go.
Is it too late if I only recognize a doorway after the fact?
It is not too late. Recognizing a threshold in hindsight is one of the most common ways we understand our own growth. Seeing where past doorways led can help you notice the one you may be standing in front of now, and it can make the next step feel a little less daunting.
