Scribbles In The Margins

I keep catching myself looking down at my conference badge today.

Not because I forgot my name.

Because every time I do, I see three words staring back at me.

Innovate. Implement. Impact.

It’s funny because I’ve spent the day listening to incredible speakers, filling pages in my notebook, and having conversations with people who are just as passionate about mental health as I am. I came here expecting to leave with new ideas, fresh perspectives, and practical things I could bring back to my clients, my supervisees, and my team. Instead, I keep finding myself coming back to the words hanging around my neck.

Maybe it’s because my brain has a habit of grabbing onto one small thing and refusing to let it go. Maybe you’re like that too, where everyone else seems to move on but your mind keeps circling the same thought because it feels like there’s something deeper hidden inside it.

That’s what these three words have done to me today.

Not because I think they’re wrong.

Because I couldn’t stop wondering if they were incomplete.

Innovation.

Implementation.

Impact.

They’re good words. They make sense for a conference. But as I sat through the morning sessions, they started feeling more like words you’d find in a business plan than words that describe how people actually change. The more I thought about them, the more I realized I needed to translate them into something my heart understood.

So I opened my notebook and, almost without thinking, I started crossing them out.

And that’s when it hit me.

Maybe the most important things we learn are never the ones printed in the conference workbook. Maybe they’re the scribbles we write in the margins when something reaches our heart before it reaches our head.

The first scribble came almost immediately.

Innovate became curiosity.

The more I sat with that, the more it made sense. I don’t think innovation begins with having the next great idea. I think it begins the moment we’re curious enough to question the life we’ve been living. Every meaningful change I’ve ever made started with a question, not an answer. What if life could be different? What if I don’t have to stay this version of myself forever? What if healing is actually possible? What if the story isn’t over yet? Those questions didn’t magically change my life, but they cracked open a door that had been closed for far too long.

As I looked around the room today, I realized every person here probably came carrying their own questions. Some are hoping to become better therapists. Some better leaders. Some better supervisors. Some may simply be trying to become better people. None of us arrived finished. We all arrived because somewhere inside us is a willingness to keep learning, and I don’t think that willingness is something to overlook. Curiosity has a way of keeping us humble. It reminds us that there is always another perspective to consider, another lesson to learn, another opportunity to grow.

As I looked back down at my notebook, another scribble found its way into the margin.

Implement became courage.

Because if curiosity opens the door, courage is what gets us to walk through it.

That one landed a little harder.

I’ve known what I needed to do long before I’ve had the courage to actually do it. I knew I needed help before I asked for it. I knew I needed to trust myself before I believed I could. I knew there were chapters of my life that needed to end before I found the strength to close them. I knew healing would require vulnerability long before I was willing to let anyone see the parts of me that still hurt. Looking back, I don’t think knowledge has ever been the thing standing between who I was and who I was becoming. Courage was.

It made me wonder how many notebooks in this room are filled with incredible ideas that may never become anything more than words on a page. Not because the ideas aren’t good, but because every meaningful change eventually asks something of us. It asks us to risk. To step into the unknown. To have the conversation. To ask for help. To forgive. To begin again. We don’t become different because we know more. We become different because we’re willing to live differently.

Then I stared at the last word for a while.

Impact.

I don’t know why, but I couldn’t write over it right away. I think it’s because we all want our lives to matter. We all want to leave the people and places around us better than we found them. There isn’t anything wrong with that.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I don’t think impact is actually something we pursue.

I think it’s something we leave behind.

So instead of writing another outcome, I wrote the thing I believe creates it.

Impact became compassion.

When I think about the people who have changed my life, I don’t remember them because they were the smartest people in the room. I remember them because they were compassionate enough to really see me. They listened before they spoke. They stayed when it would have been easier to leave. They believed in me on days I couldn’t believe in myself. They reminded me that I was more than my worst decisions, my deepest pain, or my biggest failures.

That’s what changed me.

Not their knowledge.

Not their titles.

Their compassion.

As I sit here today, surrounded by people who have dedicated their lives to helping others, I can’t help but wonder if this is true far beyond mental health. Maybe it’s true for parents trying to raise children who know they’re loved. Maybe it’s true for leaders building healthy workplaces. Maybe it’s true for teachers, coaches, first responders, neighbors, and friends. Maybe changing the world has never been about becoming extraordinary. Maybe it’s always been about becoming more fully human.

Curious enough to keep asking questions.

Courageous enough to let the answers change us.

Compassionate enough to make sure our growth is never just for ourselves.

I have no idea what the most important thing I’ll learn at this conference will be. It might come from a speaker this afternoon. It might come from a conversation over coffee. Or maybe, just maybe, it has already happened.

Maybe it happened the moment I stopped trying to fill in the blanks on the page and started paying attention to the scribbles in the margins.

Because those scribbles reminded me of the kind of person I want to keep becoming.

Be curious enough to innovate.

Be courageous enough to implement.

And be compassionate enough to create an impact you’ll probably never fully see.

The future won’t be shaped only by what we know.

It will be shaped by who we’re willing to become.

And maybe that’s why the scribbles in the margins matter so much. They’re often where our deepest learning lives. Not in the polished notes we’ll eventually file away, but in the unexpected thoughts that quietly interrupt us and ask us to become someone different. Now the question in my mind is:

What am I writing in the margins of my own life?

Maybe the greatest changes don’t begin with the notes everyone else sees. Maybe they begin with the quiet thoughts we almost overlook—the questions that make us more curious, the courage to take one small step, and the compassion to make sure our growth becomes hope for someone else.