Art by a robot
Sometimes personal growth begins with a surprisingly uncomfortable realisation. Nothing is obviously wrong. By this we mean that the therapy is helping. The business is functioning. The team is delivering. It all makes sense on paper, and yet there is a feeling you cannot quite shake. Something is missing.
Why can personal growth feel like something is missing?
Personal growth can make us more aware of a gap between what matters to us and the way we are currently living, working or relating to others. What initially feels like dissatisfaction may sometimes be the recognition that an old way of thinking, behaving or working no longer fits.
Perhaps you have been sitting in a therapy room talking intelligently about your thoughts and behaviours, while quietly wondering whether the spiritual part of your life is allowed into the conversation. Perhaps you have built a business around work that matters deeply to you, only to discover that somewhere between marketing plans, sales funnels and revenue targets, you have begun to sound like everybody else. Or perhaps you are sitting in a meeting discussing transformation, performance or organisational change while noticing that nobody has said very much about what any of this feels like for the people expected to live through it.
These are very different situations, but underneath them may be the same experience.
You are beginning to notice a gap between what is being discussed and what actually feels important.
And noticing that gap can itself be evidence that something in you is changing.
Sometimes growth makes the missing pieces easier to see
When we are trying very hard to fit into an existing system, we tend to work with the language that system gives us. In therapy, we might talk about symptoms, behaviours, coping mechanisms or goals. In business, we might talk about positioning, productivity, audiences and conversion. In organisations, we might talk about deliverables, processes, structures and performance.
And of course none of those things are inherently wrong. The problem appears when the available language becomes almost too small for the experience we are actually having.
You might find yourself wanting to talk about meaning rather than merely behaviour. You might want to talk about whether your business still feels like it’s yours rather than whether you have posted enough content this week. You might want to ask whether people feel safe enough to tell the truth before asking why a change programme is behind schedule.
Sometimes we interpret that discomfort as evidence that we have become difficult, unrealistic or overly sensitive but it may simply mean that our awareness has expanded. You have started noticing something you could previously tolerate without questioning it.
And once you can see what is missing, it can become surprisingly difficult to stop seeing it.
For some people, the missing piece is spirituality
This is particularly visible in therapy. Spirituality can be deeply connected with how someone understands identity, grief, hope, values, purpose and the meaning they make from difficult experiences. Yet research has repeatedly identified gaps in the training psychologists and other mental health professionals receive around religion and spirituality. Research has also found relationships between spirituality, meaning-making, resilience and wellbeing.
That does not mean every therapeutic conversation needs to become spiritual. Nor does it mean a therapist should introduce their own beliefs into somebody else’s process. Quite the opposite. A psychologically safe space should allow the person receiving support to decide which parts of their experience matter.
For someone using tarot, ritual, meditation, prayer or another spiritual practise as part of their life, having to quietly edit those experiences out of the therapy room can create an odd kind of fragmentation. You can be talking about yourself while simultaneously leaving part of yourself outside and eventually you might notice that. Perhaps the change is not that you have magickally become more spiritual, perhaps you have simply become less willing to divide yourself into ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ pieces.
In your business, the missing piece might be authenticity
There is another version of this experience that we see in people building spiritual, creative or values-led businesses. At first, the business often grows from something very personal, almost like a calling. A way of helping people that feels connected to who you actually are.
Then business advice enters the picture. You learn about niches, offers, funnels, algorithms, customer journeys and content strategies. Again, none of those things are inherently the problem because structure can be incredibly useful. But somewhere along the way, you may notice that the business is becoming technically more polished while somehow feeling less like you. You write the sensible post instead of the interesting one. You create the offer you think will sell instead of the work you actually want to become known for.
You follow somebody else’s blueprint and then wonder why succeeding at it feels strangely hollow. This is often described as a business problem but sometimes it is actually an integration problem and the missing piece may be you.
Recognising that doesn’t necessarily mean throwing away everything you have learned about business. Instead, it might mean beginning to ask different questions; Does this way of working fit the person I am becoming? Can I create structure without becoming rigid? What parts of myself have I quietly edited out because I assumed they would make the business harder to explain?
Those questions are not evidence that the business is failing, they may be evidence that the person running it has developed.
And sometimes the missing piece is humanity at work
The same thing happens inside organisations. We are often very good at talking about the visible parts of work. Governance. Processes. Roles and responsibilities. And of course these things matter, but anyone who has spent enough time around organisational change knows there is another layer running underneath them.
People are making sense of uncertainty. They are deciding whether it is safe to ask questions. They are interpreting what leaders say and what leaders actually reward. They are wondering what a change means for their identity, their competence, their relationships and their place in the organisation. Those experiences rarely appear neatly on a project plan but they still shape what happens.
A leader may eventually find themselves sitting in a workshop looking at a perfectly sensible change model and thinking: Something is missing here. Perhaps it is empathy or psychological safety, and there can be something strangely vulnerable about noticing this especially if you work in an environment where leadership has traditionally meant having answers.
Inviting a coach, facilitator or organisational development specialist into the room can therefore feel surprisingly uncomfortable. It can almost feel like an admission that leadership alone should have been enough. But perhaps a healthier interpretation is possible. Perhaps bringing somebody in to help a team think does not mean the leader has failed to lead. Perhaps recognising that the team needs a different kind of conversation is itself an act of leadership.
Not everything important fits neatly into professional language
Part of the difficulty is that some experiences become harder to discuss when we move into professional spaces.
Spirituality can feel too personal for therapy.
Intuition can feel too vague for business.
Emotion can feel too soft for leadership.
Meaning can feel too philosophical for an organisational workshop.
So we translate them. Or avoid them. Or replace them with language that sounds more acceptable. And sometimes that translation is useful, but sometimes something important gets lost. For example, a person may say they need motivation when what they really need is permission, a business owner may say they need a clearer strategy when what they are actually struggling with is incongruence or a leadership team may say they have a communication problem when people simply do not feel safe enough to tell them what is happening.
The work becomes different once we can name the real thing.
Growth can feel like being less willing to abandon yourself
One of the quieter signs of personal change is that certain forms of self-abandonment become harder to maintain.
Things you previously accepted begin to feel uncomfortable. Conversations that once seemed normal start to feel strangely incomplete. Ways of working that once helped you succeed start asking you to become somebody you no longer want to be.
This can be confusing. We often imagine growth as becoming more certain, and yet sometimes growth does exactly the opposite.
It introduces a new question: Is this still right for me?
And you may not immediately know the answer. That period can feel awkward because the old way still works well enough to continue, while the new way has not yet fully formed.
You might know that spirituality matters but not know how to bring it into your therapeutic work. You might know that your business needs to feel more authentic without yet knowing what you want to change. You might know that your team needs a more human way of working without having the language to describe what that would look like.
This is often where people assume they are stuck but we think something more interesting may be happening. You are recognising the limits of an old way of making sense of things.
Integration is different from replacing one system with another
This is where our approach to humanistic magick sits. Humanistic magick is interested in integration. It asks what happens when we stop forcing useful parts of ourselves into separate compartments.
Psychology does not have to disappear because spirituality matters. Commercial thinking does not have to disappear because authenticity matters. Structure does not have to disappear because empathy matters.
The invitation is to explore whether those things can coexist. That might mean combining reflection with ritual. It might mean combining intuition with a business plan. It might mean designing organisational processes while also paying attention to how people experience them.
The deeper movement is from fragmentation towards greater congruence rather than becoming a completely different person. And becoming increasingly able to inhabit the person who is already trying to emerge.
You may notice the change before you know what to do with it
Perhaps that is the part of personal development we do not talk enough about. You often notice what no longer fits before you know what belongs in its place.
That is true whether you are sitting in a therapy room, running your own practice or leading hundreds of people through organisational change.
You notice yourself hesitating. Questioning. Wanting a different conversation. Finding yourself more interested in why something feels wrong than in learning another technique for making it work.
Those moments can seem insignificant but they may be evidence of becoming. You are developing a clearer sense of what matters, a stronger awareness of what feels congruent and perhaps a little less willing to pretend that the missing pieces don’t matter simply because the room you are standing in doesn’t have language for them yet.
A question worth taking with you
Think about one space in your life where you are currently trying to create change.
It might be therapy or personal development. Your business. Your team. Your relationships.
Rather than asking immediately: How do I fix this?
Try asking: What feels missing from the way I am currently approaching this?
And then perhaps: What becomes possible if that part is allowed into the conversation?
You may not have an immediate answer and you don’t necessarily need one. Sometimes noticing what is missing is the first sign that you are becoming ready to create something different.
References
Credit where credit is due, we aim to cite our sources because we value truthful content. 3 sources were referenced during research to write this, but you are encouraged to follow our other links as well.
- Vieten, Cassandra & Lukoff, David. (2021). Spiritual and Religious Competencies in Psychology. American Psychologist. 77. 26-38. 10.1037/amp0000821.
- Pearce MJ, Pargament KI, Wong S, Hinkel H, Salcone S, Morgan G, Kemp D, Brock B, Kim E, Oxhandler HK, Vieten C, Fox J, Polson EC, Currier JM. Enhancing training in spiritual and religious competencies in mental health graduate education: Evaluation of an integrated curricular approach. PLoS One. 2024 Sep 23;19(9):e0306114. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0306114. PMID: 39312528; PMCID: PMC11419373.
- Howard AH, Roberts M, Mitchell T, Wilke NG. The Relationship Between Spirituality and Resilience and Well-being: a Study of 529 Care Leavers from 11 Nations. Advers Resil Sci. 2023;4(2):177-190. doi: 10.1007/s42844-023-00088-y. Epub 2023 Feb 11. PMID: 36816809; PMCID: PMC9918825.
About Humanistic Magick
Humanistic Magick is a psychology-informed framework developed by Andie Brookes that integrates reflective and symbolic practises to support meaningful, lasting personal change. You can explore the full reference guide here https://magentaschoolofmagick.com/what-is-humanistic-magick/
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