I'm standing in my front yard in Montecito, holding a mason jar with a chrysalis hanging inside. It's early morning, and I notice something different.

The chrysalis is moving.

Not swaying. Moving. Shaking like something is fighting to escape from inside.

Which, of course, is exactly what's happening.

The Jade Pendant That Changed Everything

Ten years ago, a guy here in Santa Barbara gave my wife Kymberlee a chrysalis. I'd never seen one up close. It looked like a little jade pendant with beautiful gold specs around the top.

"It's not jewelry," she told me. "It's life, waiting."

We got hooked on raising monarchs. Planted milkweed throughout our enclosed front yard because that's what the caterpillars eat. And boy, do they eat - a single caterpillar can consume thirty to forty leaves a day.

Eventually, we had twenty or thirty chrysalises at any given time, hanging from orchids, attached to fences, dangling from plants that had nothing to do with milkweed. The caterpillars would wander when ready to transform, looking for the perfect spot to hang and change.

We'd carefully move each chrysalis into a mason jar and wait for the metamorphosis.

But here's what no sixth-grade science class ever told me: the transformation is violent.

The Struggle IS the System

I watched that chrysalis shake harder and harder. At first gentle, then urgent, then frantic. The entire structure convulsed, as if desperate to break free.

What I learned later: this isn't random thrashing. The butterfly inside uses hydraulic pressure, pumping fluids through its body to push against the chrysalis shell. Over and over, targeting predetermined weak points in the casing.

The shaking gets more intense. Faster. More desperate-looking.

Then, in seconds, the shell splits and the butterfly breaks free.

Here's what changed everything for me: if you help a butterfly out of its chrysalis, it will die.

Or at best, never fly.

The physical exertion of breaking free develops the strength needed to pump fluid into wings and expand them properly. Remove the struggle, and you don't get a butterfly. You get something beautiful that can't function.

I stood there watching this newly emerged butterfly hang wet and crumpled, slowly expanding its wings, and realized I'd been thinking about transformation completely wrong.

The Lamaze Lesson That Lasted 53 Years

This takes me back to when I was nineteen, sitting in the first Lamaze class ever offered in Santa Barbara. My son was about to be born, and we'd decided on natural childbirth.

The instructor looked at all us nervous parents-to-be and said something I've never forgotten:

"This is going to be hard. It's going to hurt. I'm going to teach you everything that will happen, so there are no surprises. Fear comes from the unknown. If you know what to expect, when to expect it, and why each stage matters, you can handle any amount of pain."

She didn't promise to make birth easier. She promised to make it known.

That lesson has served me for five decades. Every time I feel fear, I ask myself: Am I afraid of the difficulty, or am I afraid because I don't know what's coming?

Usually, it's the unknown that terrifies us, not the struggle itself.

The New York Client Who Wouldn't Rock the Boat

I'm in a Manhattan office, staring at a large butterfly painting behind my client's desk. She's the Chief Learning Officer for an organization that's bleeding money due to constant turnover. Millions are lost every year.

I point to the painting. "Do you know how that butterfly got there?"

She smiles. "Caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly.

"

"True. But do you know about the one moment no one talks about? The violent part?"

I tell her how the chrysalis shakes, convulses, nearly tears itself apart, how the butterfly builds the strength to live by breaking free. And how, if you help, it dies.

Silence.

Then she says quietly, "I don't think my people have the willpower to go through that."

And there it was. The truth. The Chief Learning Officer wasn't afraid of turnover. She was afraid of learning. She'd rather accept slow death than risk watching her people shake their way into strength.

The Improv Rule That Explains Everything

In improv comedy, there's a cardinal rule: you're not allowed to "fix" the scene. The moment someone resolves the tension or smooths over the conflict, the scene dies. And with it, the comedy.

The human condition is inherently comedic - marked by mistakes, misunderstandings, and fumbling through unprepared situations. That's where magic happens.

But our instinct is to step in and fix it. Make it easier. Eliminate struggle.

Maybe we shouldn't.

Maybe the kindest thing we can do is not step in to fix it.

I know how that sounds. But what if our instinct to help actually prevents transformation? What if we don't step in to save them? We step in to save ourselves from watching them struggle.

The AI Parallel Every Leader Faces

I've been thinking about this as I work with leaders grappling with AI integration. Every conversation follows the same pattern:

They know transformation is necessary. They know their industry is changing. They need to adapt or risk irrelevance.

But they're paralyzed.

* "My people don't know what AI can or cannot do."

* "They've heard all the negative media coverage."

* "Everything is changing so fast."

They're not afraid of struggle. They're afraid because they don't know what the struggle will look like.

Just like my New York client, they tell themselves: "My people can't handle this level of change."

But really: "I don't know what this transformation will require, and that unknown feels too dangerous."

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The DNA Truth

A few months ago, I told this butterfly story to a friend with a butterfly on her notebook. Days later, another butterfly appeared on her coffee cup.

"Ever since you told me that story," she said, "I've been thinking - the DNA of the butterfly is already in the caterpillar, isn't it?"

She was absolutely right.

The caterpillar isn't becoming something foreign. It's becoming what it was always meant to be. The struggle doesn't create the butterfly - it reveals it.

What does that mean for our businesses? Our relationships? How far can we take this analogy?

Maybe the leader is afraid their organization can't handle AI transformation, forgetting that adaptation capacity is already in their people's DNA.

Maybe the parent watching their teenager struggle needs to remember the adult is already there, working their way out.

Maybe the entrepreneur afraid to pivot is forgetting that the next version of their company is already encoded in what they've built.

What We Get Wrong About Helping

We've been conditioned to think difficulty means we're doing it wrong.

That struggling people need rescuing. That hard change requires an easier way.

But what if the struggle is where strength comes from?

What if the difficulty is the point?

What if the most loving thing we can do is prepare people for struggle instead of trying to eliminate it?

The Gold Specs Secret

Those beautiful gold specs on the chrysalis? For years, I thought they were decorative. Nature's jewelry.

I was wrong.

They're breathing holes. Even in the darkest phase, oxygen is built in.

The Migration That Disappeared

Here's what breaks my heart: Montecito used to be on the monarch migration path. There's still a street called Butterfly Lane near our house.

But there are hardly any butterflies anymore

.

Migration routes shifted. Habitats changed. Milkweed disappeared to development and pesticides.

We still plant milkweed in our front yard, but we can't bring back the migration.

Some transformations happen whether we're ready or not. Some changes occur on timelines we don't control.

The question isn't whether change will come. The question is whether we'll trust ourselves and others to handle it when it does.

What Real Leadership Looks Like

Every leader dealing with AI adoption is facing their chrysalis moment. The old shell of how they've always operated won't work anymore. Pressure is building. The shaking has started.

Will they trust the process, or try to cut themselves out of the struggle that would give them strength?

The organizations that thrive won't be those avoiding struggle. There'll be those who understand it, prepare for it, and trust their people to handle it.

They'll eliminate the surprise, not the difficulty.

The Violence of Beautiful Things

Not violence as destruction. Violence as the force required to break through what confines us.

The butterfly's emergence. Labor intensity. Disruption required to transform a dying organization. The discomfort of learning something new in your fifties.

Maybe our job isn't to eliminate that process for others.

Perhaps it's to help them recognize the gold specs—the breathing room built into even the most difficult transitions.

Perhaps it's a matter of trusting that the DNA of what they're becoming is already there, waiting for the right conditions to emerge.

Maybe our job is to prepare people for the violence of beautiful things.

The Mason Jar Wisdom

I still have those mason jars in my garage. Sometimes I hold one and remember witnessing transformation up close

.

The waiting. Not knowing exactly when. The moment of breakthrough. Patience required for drying and strengthening. Joy of watching something beautiful take flight.

But mostly, I remember learning that the most violent-looking part was the most necessary.

The struggle creates the strength. The pressure builds the wings. Breaking through makes flight possible.

What if we stopped trying to make transformation easier and started making it more predictable?

What if instead of promising "smooth change management," we said: "This will be hard. Here's exactly what that hardness will look like. Here's when it happens. Here's why each stage matters. Here's what comes out the other side."

People can handle extraordinary struggle if they know what to expect.

What they can't handle is being blindsided by difficulty they weren't prepared for.

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The butterfly doesn't ask permission to outgrow its chrysalis. The pressure builds until something has to give. Our choice is whether we participate consciously or let it happen to us.

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