I Need a Bigger Problem

Who would ever want a bigger problem?

Aren’t we all trying to solve the ones we have so we can finally relax?

But over the years—through the seminars, the 3-day intensives, the retreats, the team-building rooms filled with sticky notes and breakthroughs—I’ve come to understand the wisdom in that statement. In fact, it’s one of the ideas that made me fall in love with coaching in the first place.

I’ve spent so many hours watching people stand up in front of a room of strangers, their hands trembling just a little, their hearts cracking open as they share the thing they’ve been wrestling with. It takes a special kind of courage to reveal the messiness of your inner world while a hundred—or a thousand—faces watch.

And yet… those are the moments where transformation becomes contagious.

Because when someone is brave enough to stand there and let the coach work with them in real time, something magical happens:

Everyone else in the room gets coached too.

You can see it in the way people lean forward.

You can feel the emotional shift—even in silence—when someone else’s breakthrough clicks into place for you.

That is the real gift of these spaces: personal work becomes collective wisdom.

And somewhere in those rooms, in the middle of all those stories and tears and insights, I started to understand what “finding a bigger problem” really meant. It wasn’t about shaming ourselves for having our gripes. It was about elevating your life to the point where the things that once overwhelmed you simply don’t have the same power anymore. It’s about shifting from the small, draining problems that keep you stuck…

to the bigger, more meaningful ones that pull you forward.

It’s the moment when:

“Why is everything so hard?” becomes “What am I being called to grow into?”

“How do I make this discomfort stop?” becomes “What’s the larger mission I’m avoiding?”

And in that shift, everything changes.

There was one exchange at a seminar that hit me so deeply it still echoes in my mind today. A woman stood up, took the microphone, and began sharing everything that was hard for her. All the reasons things wouldn’t work. All the challenges stacked against her. All the weight she was carrying.

And she wasn’t wrong.

As she spoke, I found myself nodding along thinking, “Damn girl… you’re right. That is hard.”

Her struggles were real. Valid. Heavy.

The coach didn’t interrupt.

Didn’t correct.

Didn’t rush to offer solutions.

She just listened—fully, completely—as did the rest of us.

When she finally ran out of words, a quiet stillness filled the room.

It was the kind of silence that feels like an inhale before a shift.

A silent collective question hung there:

“Okay… so now what?”

That’s when the coach stepped forward. She acknowledged everything she had said—her feelings, her frustrations, her exhaustion—and then she invited her into something unexpected.

He suggested she find another problem to add.

Not a chore.

Not a hassle.

Not another emotional burden.

But a bigger problem.

A meaningful problem.

One that would remind her that life is massive and rich and expansive—so much bigger than what’s for dinner, whether the bills are paid, or whether the never-ending list of “things” is done.

Because here’s the truth:

We get swallowed by the minutia.

We drown in the tiny to-do’s that trick us into believing they are the whole story.

But they aren’t.

And we’ve all had moments that prove it—moments when something so significant arrives that it instantly rearranges our entire inner landscape.

Like the time my husband went in for an easy coronary angioplasty procedure—“just to rule out any issues”—and the doctor came out with news far more serious than we expected, my world narrowed instantly. Everything I’d been irritated about that week evaporated. My mind laser-focused on the only thing that mattered:

my husband’s health and how we were going to fix this.

Or the day I learned I was pregnant—how THAT moment instantly expanded everything. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about laundry or deadlines. My heart and mind were pointed toward the future, toward the life growing inside me, toward the mother I wanted to become.

Whether the moment is painful or joyful, the effect is the same:

A big problem—or big purpose—instantly puts the small ones in their rightful place.

Which is why one of my favorite quotes is:

“There is a joy in being lost in something bigger than yourself.”

Because if my biggest problem is what to cook for dinner, then dinner becomes the center of my universe. The stress, the decision fatigue, the “what do I have in the fridge”—it all expands to fill every corner of my mental space.

But if I choose a different problem—

a problem like reaching thousands of overwhelmed moms and helping them build the skills and confidence to navigate life and parenthood with more joy, less frustration, and a sense of grounded inner leadership—

then dinner becomes… just dinner.

A small obstacle on the way back to a mission that means something.

And that’s what choosing a bigger problem does:

It gives your life a direction strong enough that the insignificant things stop steering the ship.