Finding What’s Nxt in the Change You Didn’t Choose

Some changes we choose. And some changes choose us.

As I write this, I find myself reflecting on all of the recent fires throughout Colorado. Four of them actually, have been active in our part of the state—one close enough, that on a clear night we could stand outside in the pitch black and watch the flames advance down the mountain. Five hundred firefighters have been camped at the rodeo grounds three miles from the ranch. And in the strangest way, life has continued to go on. The businesses have remained open. The tourists (for the most part) continued to visit the area. And yet…there’s a major forest fire smoldering nearby.

I know something about this kind of thing arriving without warning, because about a month ago we had a fire on our own property.

Everyone is fine. The animals are fine. But it happened fast—fast enough to destroy the camper our caretaker and his girlfriend had been living in for a year. In a matter of minutes, they lost everything they owned. Half of our garden was gone. One side of the greenhouse melted away. And Matthew and I were left standing in the aftermath asking the question I ask my clients all the time, only this time it was pointed straight back at us: okay…what now?

A Fire Has a Way of Telling You What Matters

I spend a lot of my time—at the ranch during an Immersion, and in my one-on-one coaching—helping people get clear on what’s really important to them. It’s often slow, careful work. We circle it. We uncover it a layer at a time.

A fire on your property does that work in about ninety seconds.

The moment it happened, everything sorted itself instantly. What mattered was everything living. Us. The dogs. The animals. But then, once the living things were accounted for, something surfaced. There’s a portrait of my mother in our house. I didn’t know how much it mattered to me until I imagined it gone. I had never once walked through my own home asking, “Is that important to me? What about that?” The fire asked for me.

That’s the thing about the circumstances we don’t choose. They can be terrible. And they can also hand us a clarity we would never have sat still long enough to find on our own.

Rebuild It Exactly—or Reimagine It?

Here’s where it got interesting for us.

Once the mess was cleaned up, I caught myself standing at the edge of our scorched garden, thinking not about what we’d lost, but about what we’d do next in that very spot. And I noticed I had a choice. We could rebuild the garden exactly the way it was before—and honestly, it was a great garden. Or we could pause and ask a different question: knowing everything we know now, how would we want to do it Nxt?

Is there a better way to lay it out? Something we’d improve? Are we locked into the old version simply because it’s the one we had—or are we actually free to imagine the Nxt iteration of it?

That is the exact fork in the road so many of us stand at when life burns something down for us. You can look at a forced change and think, well, this destroyed what I had, so I guess I just have to put it back. Or you can look at the very same circumstance and think, maybe this is a chance to see it with fresh eyes.

Victim, or Fresh Eyes

Nobody likes to be forced to change. It’s uncomfortable, it’s often unpleasant, and—this is the part that really gets us—it’s out of our control. We’re human. We like control.

So when a circumstance forces itself on us, we tend to meet it in one of two ways. The first is to become a victim of it—to let it convince us we’ve lost all our options and all our footing, that this simply happened to us and now we’re stuck with the mess. It’s an understandable place to land. It’s also a place that keeps you exactly where you are.

The second way is harder at first and far more freeing. It’s to take a breath and ask: what if I change how I look at this? What if the thing that happened to me could become a thing that opens something new for me—a new choice, a new direction, an option I never would have considered if life hadn’t knocked the old one down?

This Is the Work I Love Most

So much of my coaching—at the ranch during an Immersion, and in my one-on-one work with Nxt Coaching—happens right at this intersection. Someone arrives after a layoff, a divorce, the end of a career that used to fit, or a retirement they didn’t exactly plan for. They feel stuck. They feel like the change was done to them. And slowly, together, we turn the whole thing over until they can see the opportunity that was hiding inside it the entire time.

Because you don’t have to rebuild your life exactly the way it was. Being handed a change you didn’t choose is not the same as being handed a smaller life. Often it’s the opposite—it’s the moment you finally get to build the version you actually want, not the one you defaulted into. You’re not starting over. You’re starting from everything you’ve already learned.

What’s Nxt

Our caretakers are already stepping into their Nxt. They’ve found a place to live, and this community rallied around them in a way that still makes me emotional to think about. Matthew and I are rebuilding, too—but not on autopilot. We’re asking better questions this time.

So if life has recently caught fire on you—if something you didn’t choose has cleared ground you weren’t ready to lose—I’ll offer you the same two questions we’ve been asking ourselves out here. What did this just teach me about what actually matters? And now that the old version is gone, how do I want to build it Nxt?

You didn’t choose the fire. But you still get to choose what grows back.

Ready to Explore What’s Nxt?

If you’re standing at one of these forks—looking at a change you didn’t choose and wondering what could grow back in its place—that’s exactly the conversation I love to have. Nxt Coaching is one-on-one work designed to help you turn a disorienting moment into a clear, deliberate next chapter, built on everything you’ve already learned.

Click here to book a consult and let’s talk about what’s Nxt for you.