There are some people who don’t give you answers so much as ask you a question you can’t quite go back to sleep after.
Jean-Marie Jobs is one of those people for me.
I met Jean-Marie through GAP Community years ago, after more than a decade of working in marketing and messaging. I remember sitting in my first training, watching the way she asked questions, and wanting to learn how to do that. Eventually, I went through GAP’s Coaching Academy and became certified in transformational coaching myself.
And one question Jean-Marie asked me during that season later became the question underneath the very first episode of this show.
So, this conversation has been a long time coming.
Jean-Marie is the founder of GAP Community, a master trainer, executive coach, and author of The Art of Feeding Heroes. She has spent decades helping people find their character and courage underneath their circumstances.
And this conversation is about what happens when we stop treating our humanity like a problem to solve.
We talk about the pristine, imaginary versions of ourselves we can keep safely intact by never fully stepping into our lives. Why Jean-Marie believes people don’t actually resist vision, they resist vulnerability. And what it means to choose a vision big enough to call you through the pain of transformation.
At one point she asks:
Do you have a vision bigger than your ego?
Jean-Marie also shares what being diagnosed with breast cancer taught her about uncertainty, surrender, and eventually something even harder: welcoming what she could not control.
What if uncertainty isn’t something to solve, but something to dance with?
What if you could be uncertain and still fully participate in your life?
We talk about the “holy urgency” that came out of that season, a friend’s reminder that someday is today, and what might change if we stopped assuming we have endless time to become who we keep saying we want to be.
We also get into some of the less flattering places.
The hidden payoffs underneath our chronic complaints. Why the story that we’re “overgiving” may sometimes conceal the things we’re unwilling to ask for. Why having needs is not the same thing as being needy. And how much suffering we create by turning every result into evidence about who we are.
Jean-Marie puts it simply:
Outcomes are poor masters. Maybe vision is the boss.
And:
You cannot learn from something you’re resisting or judging.
This is a conversation about shortening the distance between the life you keep imagining and the life you are actually willing to participate in.
About taking the next potent step before you know the thirty after it.
About remembering that your presence is also part of the resource.
And about hope. The kind that doesn’t require everything to look hopeful first.
Because, as Jean-Marie says near the end of our conversation, sometimes the place that looks completely shattered is the exact place where possibility is buried.
FIND JEAN-MARIE + GAP
Jean-Marie Jobs: @jeanmariejobs on Instagram
GAP Community: Transformational trainings, workshops, Coaching Academy, programs for adults and young people, and more at gapcommunity.com
Workshop Your Life: Reframing Your Relationship to Results: September 12 in Pasadena, California. A one-day GAP Community workshop for anyone wanting to change the way they relate to results, pressure, and forward movement.
GAP Coaching Academy: Learn more about GAP’s transformational coaching certification and training in the art of inquiry at gapcommunity.com/academy.
The Art of Feeding Heroes: Jean-Marie’s book on leadership, character, and calling the heroic forward in ourselves and others.
