Why Some Truths Only Surface When Things Break
A coach’s reflection on the moment ordinary life stops working and what that has to do with how we see.
People often ask me what ontological coaching actually is. One of the responses I often give is this: it is the work of helping people see what they have been looking through their whole lives without realising it.
Let me explain.
Most of what shapes us is invisible to us. Not because we are inattentive, but because our assumptions, our habitual ways of seeing, our beliefs about who we are and how the world works all operate quietly, beneath conscious thought. They are the lens through which we look at everything.
And as long as the lens is intact, we don’t notice it. We only see through it.
Then something happens. An unexpected event. A piece of feedback. An email from a client. We call these the “Oh no” or “Oh wow” moments. What most people miss is this: the cause of the disruption is rarely the event itself. It is the way we had been seeing, the lens we never knew we had, that just got cracked.
And in that moment when the lens cracked, we suddenly see the lens. Not just the world we were viewing through it.
This is not a moment of failure. It is a moment of realization.
In ontological coaching, we call this “a break in transparency.”
For me, this kind of “break in transparency” moment came in 2019, before Covid.
I was leading the team on the largest project we had ever taken on - largest both in revenue amount and the scale of the project. There was no blueprint, no template, no precedent. And yet we designed the solution, pitched to the client, and won the project. Every external measure said success. The client was so pleased with the end results that they wanted to make it recurring.
But something had been off the whole way through, and I had not paid attention.
In the project debrief, it became painfully clear. My team was resentful of how I had led them. Feedback had not been heard. Requests had been ignored. I had kept pushing forward. Trust between me and them broke down and I had no idea.
Somewhere along the way, I had stopped being conscious of who I was and who I wanted to be.
How the Lens Gets Built
Here is what most people do not realise about the lens we look through.
We did not choose it.
It got built quietly, over time, out of the things we were rewarded for, the things we were punished for, the survival strategies that worked when we were young and somehow stuck around as we aged.
From the unspoken family rules. The narratives from the different authorities in our lives. The cultural scripts of the society. And the personal expectations we slipped into without quite noticing.
For me, the lens that broke in 2019 was something like this. Strong leaders deliver results. Strong leaders lead by example and push through challenges and roadblocks. A team will naturally be fearful in the face of tough challenges and there is no need to slow down and ask the team if they are okay. Strong leaders do not show fear and weaknesses.
Did I ever sit down and decide that was my philosophy of leadership? No. I just absorbed it from my parents and leaders I had admired. From a culture that rewarded outcomes over process. From an internal voice that had been with me for so long that I assumed it was simply me.
And that is the deeper trap. We don't experience the lens as a lens. We experience it as reality. As common sense. As just the way things are. The assumption disappears into the background, and from inside it, we look out at our lives and conclude that this is how the world works.
The Default Future We Drift Into
Each of us, in every area of life, has a default future. We do not choose it consciously. We drift into it. The drifting happens precisely because the assumptions driving it are invisible, running in the background like software we installed so long ago we have forgotten the program is even there.
For many Singaporeans of my generation, the default future looks like this: work harder, achieve more, earn the title, provide for the family, retire comfortably. These are not bad goals. But when they become the only map, without ever being examined, they can lead a person into a life that looks successful from the outside and feels empty on the inside.
Why We Cannot See It Until It Breaks
I wore glasses since I was 10. I forget they are on my face. I don't see them - I see through them until something small happens. A smudge. A scratch. A drop of rain. Suddenly I cannot help but notice the glasses themselves.
The lens we look at life through is the same. We don't notice it when life is moving smoothly. We notice it when something disrupts the smoothness. This could be a comment that lands wrong, a silence that feels new, a result that should feel like a win but doesn't. The disruption does not have to be dramatic. It just has to be enough to break the autopilot mode we did not know we were on.
If things were obviously broken, we would stop and look. But most of us are not in crisis. We are in something quieter. The friendships still exist. The marriage still functions. The team still delivers. So we keep going. And the lens stays invisible.
In ontological coaching, we have a name for things that have become so familiar we no longer notice them - we call them transparent. The way you walk. The way you talk. The way you engage with your colleagues. All transparent. Until something disrupts it.
That disruption is what we call a “break in transparency”. It is the moment the lens stops being invisible. The moment you finally see what you have been looking through all along.
It rarely feels good. But it is the only doorway through which a new way of seeing becomes possible.
Strategy Cannot Fix What Is Actually Wrong
After that team debrief, I did what most people would do - take a few days off, reflect, and re-strategise. This is likely a sensible response except such a response operates at the level of strategy. I had a realization during my self-reflection - strategy cannot fix what is actually wrong.
What I needed to face was a different kind of question. Not what do I need to do differently?
But who have I been, and who do I want to be?
This is what ontological coaching actually does. It supports people to shift not just their behaviour, but their way of being - so they begin to see themselves, others, and the world from a different vantage point. But this shift only becomes possible when something in the old way of being has been disrupted enough that simply returning to it is no longer an option.
The crack is the precondition for seeing the lens.
In my coaching, I help clients name what is not working, not as complaint, but as a courageous claim on a future they actually want, rather than the one they have drifted into. The first step is always the honest acknowledgement that the current path is not delivering what matters.
This is harder than it sounds in Singapore. We move so fast and efficiently that time to reflect, to stop and see, feels like a luxury. We also do not reward admissions of stuckness. Vulnerability is often read as weakness. So we manage by pushing forward, project confidence, and keep building sophisticated strategies on top of unexamined foundations. The structures hold. Until they don’t.
What To Do With the Crack
If something here resonates with you, the instinct will be to ask: so what do I do?
That is a good instinct. But the first move is not an action. It is an inquiry.
Sit with what is not working. Name it first to yourself, before anyone else. Be specific and honest.
For me, this meant facing some uncomfortable truths. I had been blinded by outward success. I had been ignoring the signs that I was not okay physically, emotionally, or spiritually. I had stopped making it safe for my wife to be honest with me, somewhere along the way I cannot quite pinpoint. I had stopped making it safe for the team I was leading.
Hard truths. But the kind that carry the possibility of change, because they locate the source of the stuckness where it actually lives - in our own way of seeing, not in the circumstances around us.
The disruption is not our enemy. It is our teacher. And unlike most teachers, it will wait patiently, and with remarkable persistence until we are ready to hear what it has been trying to say.
The lens we do not see until it cracks. The self we do not meet until ordinary life stops working the way it used to.
This is not a crisis. It is an invitation.
The question is whether we are willing to accept it.
Continue Reading: The Ontological Series
This piece is part of my ongoing series on ontological coaching - exploring how shifts in how we see produce shifts in how we live.
If this resonated, you may want to read:
Curious what your own lens might be hiding from you?
I work with leaders, professionals, and couples navigating stuckness, transitions, and the quiet sense that something is no longer working. If you would like to explore what 1-1 ontological coaching could open up for you, get in touch here.
