Circles Into Spirals: How Personal Growth Really Happens • Ep 67
Wouldn’t it be great if our personal growth was linear? Like, we face a challenge, deal with it effectively, learn the lesson and move on with our lives? But that’s not what usually happens in life. We tend to encounter the same types of challenges, themes, and emotional triggers over and over again.
Today I want to introduce you to the concept of circles (or loops) and spirals in our lives. It’s an abstract concept from geometry that makes SO much sense once it clicks for you.
Episode #67: Show Notes Transcript
We’re talking about the pattern of a circle that just keeps going round and round. Imagine being at a 24 hour amusement park where the Carousel timer is busted, and you’re riding an uncomfortable horse around and around for hours, but getting nowhere. Nothing changes.
You’re tired, your butt and back are achy, and you're frustrated at seeing the same scenery again and again with nothing new. You’ve got things you’d much rather be doing, but you’re stuck going round and round. Yuck. Nobody wants that. But that’s what life can feel like when you’re stuck in a frustrating, disempowering loop.
Recognizing Real Life Circles
In real life, this might look like attracting the kind of man you don’t really want to be with. Over and over. The same personality type who treats you in similar ways to the last 3 men you’ve had relationships with. Or maybe you feel a giant pit in your stomach and get emotionally triggered every time you find yourself at a family event with a certain person.
Maybe, like me, you find yourself constantly making things harder and more complicated than they need to be, or you strive to be overly perfect, or any number of unwanted things that just keep showing up in your life.
Eventually you may start to recognize that you’re seeing variations of the same themes showing up in your life. You might say, “Hmm. I wonder why I keep finding myself faced with these similar challenges? What’s going on here? Cause this is not what I want”
Friends, take a moment and think about this. What might your current circles be?
The Moment a Circle Starts to Spiral
The point where we find ourselves noticing and observing our lives, like a bystander, is actually the moment the circle starts to morph into a spiral, and that’s when our personal growth really starts kicking in. To give you a visual of this, imagine you’re outlining a quarter on a piece of paper, running your pencil around and around, tracing the edges of the quarter in a perfect circle. Then, on one loop around, you raise the pencil off the paper slightly, still moving in a circular motion, but also moving at a slow angle rising higher and higher away from the paper, and even moving outward to draw wider circles in the air. Can you picture that?
When we start to move from a circular pattern to a spiral, we make tiny changes with each loop that raise us higher in our development (reclaiming our wholeness). In a spiral, each time we face that same-old frustrating challenge or emotional trigger, we have a bit more awareness and we react differently. The pattern keeps repeating, but now WE are changing! Cool, right?
Maybe this time we have that familiar icky feeling on a first date, we become aware of it, we listen to it and we bravely cut that relationship short– even if he seems like the perfect guy, he’s really cute… and you’re lonely.
Or maybe this time we have a plan for what to say to that family member who triggered us at the last family holiday event. We have a short, polite response ready to go, we do some deep breathing and EFT Tapping on the way to the event, and we avoid some of the drama and stomach-ache pain.
This is Real work, Not Toxic Positivity
Now, before we go further, I want to be clear about something. Recognizing your circles and shifting them into spirals is not about slapping a positive attitude on top of a painful pattern, reciting affirmations and hoping for the best, or telling yourself to "just think differently" or "choose happiness."
If it were that simple, we all would have done that already, right? Awareness alone doesn't flip a switch. This is real work. It can be uncomfortable, humbling, and often slow. I’m not saying that to scare you, I’m letting you know this can be slow so you understand what to expect and don’t get frustrated.
This isn’t magic, friends. The spiral doesn't rise because you decide to feel better. Just being aware of the pattern does NOT make it go away. The first loop of the spiral doesn’t usually stop the pattern, but it DOES help us make progress. And your spiral slowly starts to rise. It rises because you keep showing up, keep noticing, and keep making tiny, brave choices — even when the old pattern feels magnetic and familiar.
The Equation Worth Knowing: E + R = O
Let’s talk about that awareness part for a few minutes. In my trainings with Jack Canfield, he taught us to think about the equation E + R = O. I know, I know, more math references, but stick with me! This equation means the event (whatever happened), E, plus your response or reaction to the event, R, equals the outcome (O).
Put simply — you can't always control what happens to you, but you can always control how you respond. When we aren’t fully aware, an event happens, we react automatically, and the outcome is sealed. For example: Your mother in law criticizes you (E), you try to be polite and let her rant R, and the outcome is you are cranky or sad with a stomach ache or headache for the rest of the family event.
But once you have awareness about the pattern, like, “You know, my mother in law seems to keep pushing my buttons at these family events. And I’m tired of feeling lousy afterwards”.... then you can change your response. Perhaps you plan a short, polite sentence to say, like “Thanks for your concern, but I don’t want to talk about that today. Thank you for understanding” and you practice it ahead of time.
Now, at the next family event, when she starts pestering you, you gently interrupt, say your statement as confidently as you can muster, and you turn and walk away politely, without drama or disrespect. And by the way, my mother in law is lovely, I just used that as a relatable example.
You Control Your Response– That’s It
In this E + R = O framework, the R, your response is what you can control. You absolutely can not control how the other person will react, and managing their feelings is NOT your responsibility. And I want to shout that last sentence, because many of us struggle with this, especially any of us with past trauma. We often unconsciously try to control other people’s feelings. I'm telling you right now, that is NOT your job. Cross that off your mental to do list. Ok?
Spirals Feel Different Than Circles
Circles repeat without change. They loop the same pattern, the same reaction, the same outcome. There is no upward movement—only repetition.
Spirals revisit the same themes, but with increasing awareness. Each loop carries a slight shift—a new breath, a new choice, a new angle. The pattern repeats, but you, inside it, are changing!
What This Looks Like in Real Life
Say you have a pattern of over-committing — saying yes to everything, running yourself ragged, and then feeling resentful and exhausted. That's the circle. Loop after loop, someone asks something of you, you feel that familiar pressure in your chest, and the word "yes" is out of your mouth before you've even thought about it.
Then one day you notice it. You start to see the pattern — oh, there's that chest tightness again — and maybe this time you pause, take a breath, and say, "Let me check my schedule and get back to you," which buys you some time to think about whether this is really a good fit for you or not. Maybe you’ll still say yes, and that’s fine. But in that moment where you didn’t let the “YES” rush out of your mouth, something has already shifted.
The next time you’re in a situation like this, perhaps you’ll pause a little longer. Maybe you decide to say NO to something small and low-stakes, just to feel what doing that feels like. Your hands might even shake a little — because the old pattern is strong.
But slowly, loop by loop, you'll be building a new muscle. The asks probably won’t stop coming. But it doesn’t matter, because at the end of the spiral, YOU are not the same person answering them! Amazing, right?
Why Circles Feel Impossible to Escape
The person stuck inside a circle usually feels trapped, it feels like nothing will ever change. Why? Because their breath never completes, meaning, they can’t move past the subtle (or not so subtle) triggered nervous system and bodily reaction. Each time around, the loop is closed, but it doesn't move upward. And I’m bringing the language of breath into this conversation, which may sound odd, but think about what happens when your nervous system gets triggered– in addition to your heart starting to pound faster, your breathing often becomes shallow, short, and fast. Maybe even frantic. Can you picture what I’m talking about here?
A circle begins to spiral when your awareness perks up. You start to notice the pattern and see the signs of it earlier. Then your breath changes, you learn to pause before reacting and you wait until you feel your body before you decide what to do, how to react. Then, you make a small choice that shifts everything: “This time, I tell someone.” or “This time, I leave sooner.” or “This time, I choose differently.” Each of these is what we call a breath vector—a slight upward tilt in the loop.
Your Spirals are Unique to You
Once you’re aware of this “circles versus spirals” phenomenon, don’t get caught up in how fast or slow your spiral is rising. Spirals come in all shapes and sizes, and all rising movement is progress! To give you some visuals of this, a faster rising spiral’s path might resemble the shape of an upside-down orange traffic cone, while a slow and steady rising spiral might resemble a Wok, the slightly sloping stovetop cooking pan. One spiral shape isn’t better than any other. Each of YOUR spirals is unique and perfectly designed for you alone.
When You Finally Complete a Spiral
I’ve got some good news/bad news about what happens when you turn a circle into a spiral, and eventually complete that spiral and your body finds peace with that trigger or situation. You’ll probably feel amazing– other seemingly unrelated parts of your life might also improve, and then…. yep, you might have suspected this… another circle will likely reveal itself.
To me this is very similar to what’s called “shadow work” in the self-help world, just another way to look at it. When you work through the stuff, the shadows, the circles that are interfering with you living your best life, you DO feel better. And then your body & mind are like “Phew! She finally recognized this and dealt with it. Yay! Now let’s see what she can do with this related issue…”
Hopefully you’re starting to sense the difference between circles and spirals, and I know this can feel a little abstract when you’re first introduced to it. An easy way to remember this is that in a circle, the pattern controls you. You repeat the same loop with no change in awareness or outcome. It feels endless, and just keeps going around and around, like that broken Carousel ride.
But in a spiral, you begin to repeat the pattern, but you gain more and more awareness each time. Every repetition carries more breath, more mind-body-breath coherence, and more choice. Yeah, the same pattern is still repeating, but now YOU are not the same. And the YOU that experiences the repeating pattern keeps changing and growing the whole time.
Your Invitation This Week
As you move into this week, I invite you to journal about what themes are showing up in your life. And when you look at the patterns, do you see circles, or spirals starting to form? And lastly, what small choice could tilt your circle into a spiral or move your spiral forward? What’s a small thing you could do differently than the last loop around?
And I encourage you to try the “so simple it’s silly” spiral breathing I’ve been sharing with you. Play with it for yourself and see if it helps you as much as it helps me. We’ll do a breath cycle in a moment, but you can always dive into it at omwowpod.com/breath.
Whatever circle you may find yourself in today, please know that you are NOT stuck there. You're already tipping it into a spiral because you're here, you’re listening, and just by doing that you’re prioritizing your own self care. Yay you!
Be kind to yourself, and have a fabulous week my friends!
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