Speed, Depth & Distance: The Physics of Transformation
Not all transformation is created equal. Listen to a hundred podcasts on neuroscience, read a dozen books on confidence or leadership, yet we feel stuck. Understand the concepts, explain and debate them with other people, but when it matters in the meeting or in thought, nothing shifts. Collecting knowledge, not experiencing transformation. And it's ok, but it can be different. This article will give more resolution to the terrain so you can consciously choose the right tool for your objective, and become conscious in your growth.
I know this because I have been on a voyage of personal discovery for twenty five years. I've been lost at sea for years at a time, caught in storms, broken masts, I've even sunk more than once. Luckily, I have a relentless engine, so I have always kept going. It seems my job was to map out the terrain so that others can have a straighter path. So, I paid attention. I mapped the territory so you don't have to. I found a three dimensional landscape of transformation. There is speed, depth and distance. Every method, every tool, every approach you have ever tried or heard of fits somewhere within these dimensions. When you know how and where it fits, you can select what you need. No longer have to flounder, wait for change, or hope it arrives. You can choose it.
Not all dimensions are created equal. You can grow fast but be stuck fast on the surface (The Knower), you can go deep but never apply it to your daily life (The Spiritualist), or you can achieve big results yet still feel disconnected on the inside (The Achiever). That is because transformation has three dimensions, and if even one is missing, progress is limited, or temporary.
You can see this clearly in the three types. I've lived all three at some point.
The Knower grows fast but only on the surface. Like a speedboat. They collect facts, research, models and language. In meetings they can explain the theory, quote the expert, know what 'should' happen and why. They carry confidence in their knowledge and certainty in their logic, and defend it aggressively. But when real life asks for intuition, vulnerability, flexibility or emotion, they freeze. They are skilled in cognitive understanding but not in experiencing. There is little depth, no real innovation, and no ability to hold the discomfort of the unknown.
The Spiritualist goes deep but rarely applies it. They journal, meditate, understand their trauma, attend retreats, and speak fluently about consciousness and inner work. They know their patterns, their attachment style, their wounds, and can name which part of them is activated in any moment. But life still waits for them to act. They avoid the difficult conversation. They shy away from setting a boundary. They retreat from leadership, risk or responsibility. They are awake on the inside but unchanged on the outside. Their growth has taken them into reflection, but not into integration. They understand their pain but do not re-enter the world with it transformed into power. Their depth has become a sanctuary rather than a source of movement.
The Achiever gets results but feels disconnected. They work hard, perform well, build the career, hit the targets, and receive recognition for it. They know how to move life forward, yet they feel like a visitor in their own story. At home, they are distant. In quiet moments, they feel a thinness to their life, like something essential is missing. They have mastered discipline and output but lost connection to meaning, joy or inner presence. They are rarely present, wake up successful but not fulfilled. Life looks right but does not feel true. Success has not turned into wholeness.
None of these people are doing it wrong. They are simply using tools outside their design. A podcast is built for insight, not for rewiring behaviour. A performance goal can improve results, but it cannot heal a wound. Therapy can bring deep awareness, but it will not automatically build structure, accountability or execution. Every tool has a natural speed, a natural depth and a natural distance it can travel.
🎯 The problem is not information, but mistaking knowledge as the best way to achieve transformation.
Part 2: Speed of Transformation, How Fast Can I Grow?
One of my favourite things about growing older is seeing where other people are in their lives and what they have built over the years. The differences are increasingly obvious as we progress. I like to try and see why some people have flourished, and in what ways they have flourished. It's like a garden, all so different. I also notice what might be stuck, what weeds have grown, what cobwebs remain, why some of the most thoughtful people stay stuck in the same habits even though they care deeply and pay attention. What separates them is rarely intelligence or intention. Many engage in activities which only deliver slow transformation.
Picture someone in a senior role who wants to step up into executive leadership. They think about it constantly. They replay meetings in their head. They listen to podcasts about influence on the drive to work. They read leadership books at night. They imagine what they would do differently. Yet when the key leadership moments come, moments of compassion, curiosity, insight, they glide past unseen to this person. It's not a lack of effort.
Every tool that helps us change lives somewhere along a spectrum of speed of change. How quickly can it bring about growth:
Rumination: It feels like thinking, but it is looping, analysing, rehearsing fear and replaying the past internally. We all spend some time here.
Podcasts: They give ideas and language, but nothing changes unless life demands application. For many, this is the primary approach.
Reading: Deeper, more engaged and focused learning, there are some experiential aspects but it still lives in the mind.
Structured Learning: Mentoring, courses or education, moves things further. It asks you to practice, reflect and interact.
Depth Coaching: Someone sees what you cannot see, responds to the moment, interrupts your pattern in real time, and asks you to investigate more deeply.
Often transformation simply require a certain number of cycles of an emotion, or awareness before they become real. The great news is that repetitions can be accelerated. You can control the speed at which things land in your body, mind and behaviour. We've been taught to lower our expectations of change, to assume growth must be slow. That belief keeps people stuck longer than they need to be. There are powerful tools available, and when used with intention, change can be rapid. Now that I know this, I select tools and people for myself the same way. Once you know you know.
Speed matters because without it we stay still. But speed is only one dimension. You can move quickly and still stay shallow. You can collect language and still avoid yourself. I'll cover the other two dimensions next.
🎯 Many of us choose the the slowest forms of transformation, not realising thinking and consuming don't produce change.
Part 3: Depth of Transformation, How Deep Can I Grow?
Why do we know so much and still repeat the same patterns. Why can we understand our trauma, quote psychology, nod when somebody says 'emotional intelligence', and still collapse when it matters. If knowledge was enough, most of us would already be who we want to become. Especially in the corporate world, the problem is not information. It is depth.
Depth is about how far we explore below our own surface. You can understand anxiety and still wake up with a tight chest every morning. You can know why you avoid conflict and still avoid it. The mind learns fast, our culture has taught and rewarded mental learning. The body and heart speak different languages, learning those languages is depth.
Each level deeper takes you closer to the real cause of your behaviour, and closer to your source of power, inspiration and joy. This is a journey home.
Goals and KPIs: The surface layer. You focus on outcomes, targets and performance.
Effort and Discipline: When goals fail, you push harder, force habits and try to control the outcome.
Emotional Intelligence: Learning the language of your inner world. Noticing feelings, regulating reactions and caring for your inner world.
Shadow work: Illuminating the fears and beliefs underneath your behaviour. Meeting the parts of you that protect, criticise or hide.
Self-Actualisation: Learning to live from your true nature. Connecting to the core of who you are, from here identity shifts, and action comes from alignment, not from effort.
Depth matters because without it, change will always be temporary and surface level. Speed will move you forward, but only depth will take you downwards to where transformation begins.
🎯 Transformation can't happen when never reach down to the deeper fears, beliefs and inner patterns inside.
Part 4: Distance of Transformation, How Far Can I Know?
What is the point of growth if it only lives in one part of your life. If you can lead a team but cannot tell the truth at home. If you can manage a crisis at work but cannot sit alone without reaching for distraction, is that success or is it survival. Distance is the third dimension of transformation. It asks a simple question. How broad is your lens. Is it narrow, in the mind or does it reach your body. Does it enter your relationships. Does it shape how you live, love and lead?
Think about someone who has mastered productivity. They rise early, plan their day, hit their goals. At work they are capable, confident and respected. But when they return home, they cannot relax. Their partner feels them drift. Their mind is still at work or already in tomorrow. They struggle to be emotionally present, to play, to soften. Growth has happened, but it has not broadened. It stayed in one domain. The external world changed. The inner world did not.
This is a common pattern in high performers who know how to build a career but not a life.
From narrow to wide, breadth looks like this:
Results: Success others can see. Earning more, performing better, bigger roles, becoming fitter, accumulating more.
Behaviour: Deliberate action, moving at pace, building energy and focus. The ability to push through.
Self-Relationship-: Fear, stress or sadness are still present, but no longer hunted or avoided. Emotion becomes usable information rather than a threat. It fuels awareness instead of shutting it down.
Alignment: Actions begin to match values effortlessly. Limiting beliefs are seen and lifted. Life is guided less externally, and more by what feels true and right.
True-Self Connection: Identity is no longer tied to performance or roles. Decisions flow from presence rather than proving. Life is lived from essence instead of expectation.
Most people stop at results. Some build disciplined behaviour and live in the land of grit and willpower, the territory of David Goggins and Jocko Willink. There is value in this, but it is not the whole picture. A smaller number reach emotional freedom, often after loss, burnout or crisis cracks something open. Very few allow growth to travel all the way to identity. Until it does, growth remains conditional. Confidence survives only when life is going well. Kindness exists only when it is earned. Peace is present only when there is no pressure. That is not transformation, that is management and it's both exhausting and limited.
🎯 Transformation is muted when it stays in one area of life and never travels into relationships, identity or self.
Part 5: Integrated Transformation
Transformation becomes real only when all three dimensions begin working together. To grow in three dimensions, we need a map of the terrain we cannot see from inside our own mind. That is why I created a the True Self Diagnostic.
The diagnostic is a 120-question 'awareness opener' that reveals what is really shaping your life beneath the surface. It uses 10 key themes of life, across both the inner and outer world. These themes contains 30 pillars such as Self-Worth, Mental Non-Attachment, Authenticity, Inner Coherence and Purpose. Each pillar acts like a lens. It shows where you are strong, where you are compensating and where things are blocked.
This matters because most people do not lack effort. They lack clarity. The diagnostic makes the invisible visible. It shows whether growth is fast but shallow, deep but isolated, or powerful in one area and absent in another. It is not a personality test. It does not tell you who you are. It shows you the patterns that are running your life when you are not paying attention.
Starting in November, my Strategy Session has evolved into an Insight Session. In this complimentary thirty minute conversation you receive access to the Diagnostic and we unpack it in the context of your goals. We identify where progress is being held back and begin there. This is not about fixing. It is about aligning. When awareness, choice and method come together, change is no longer an accident. It becomes a direction.
🎯 When transformation becomes three dimensional, life, career and leadership results does too.
👉 Curious? Book an Insight Session and receive access to the diagnostic, your personal results and a conversation to start mapping next step in your growth. Message me, or book via website.
MikeMcGregor.com.au
