Many of us know the experience: a client leaves a session glowing with a profound insight. A few weeks later, they return saying, “It doesn’t feel as alive anymore. Not much has changed.”
So what happened to that big “aha”?
One way of seeing this is that insights are often born in a particular state of presence. In the session, client and facilitator are slowed down, attuned, and paying exquisite attention to inner experience. That alone can make everything feel brighter and more meaningful. Outside the session, life resumes its usual pace. The state shifts, and the insight can seem to fade.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the insight has “failed”. It may mean it needs time, observation, and integration.
A few ideas that can help:
- Normalize different tempos of change. Change doesn’t always happen in a day. Sometimes the session is the beginning of a longer process of noticing, not a one-off transformation.
- Invite ongoing observation. Clients can simply “watch themselves” in daily life:
- “How am I going about this habit today?”
- “What’s it like when I do the old thing? What’s it like when I don’t?”
- Name presence as part of the process. That vivid, fresh feeling isn’t just the insight—it’s the state they were in when it arrived. Helping clients recognize that state as a resource they can revisit can be more powerful than clinging to the content of the insight.
As one Clean Coaching group call participant reflected recently, some issues may not flip in a single big shift; they may require cultivating more self-awareness and presence around the wider topic over time.
Perhaps the question isn’t “How do I freeze this insight so it never fades?” but “How do I live with this insight—keep noticing, keep being present—as it reshapes me over time?”
This blog really resonated with me. I’ve seen how powerful those “aha” moments can be, and how easily they can fade without a way to return to them.
It made me reflect on what kind of support system might help a coachee keep that “aha” alive. By support system, I’m thinking of the people, structures, and resources that enable change to continue beyond the session.
Part of that can include reminders, anchors and triggers, that help the learning reappear at just the right moment. I’ve seen people create these in many different ways, writing a short poem, drawing an image, wearing a rubber band, or choosing an object that represents the learning.
One approach I’ve found useful myself is what I think of as a single-word metaphor, a word that captures the essence of the insight and can be returned to daily.
Perhaps one way of supporting a coachee is to explore what kind of system would help the insight live on. Like in Clean Action Space, this can be invited with a question such as, “And how will you do that?”
It also reminds me that insight isn’t necessarily the destination. What may matter more is what happens next, and how what has emerged continues to develop over time.
When someone says, “It doesn’t feel as alive anymore” or “Not much has changed,” I wonder whether that might be part of their system noticing, and whether change is already underway.
For me, I think trusting the coachee and their system remains central