The Framework
The Sky Chase Cycle
Four stages. No hype, no overnight transformation — just an honest, repeatable way to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
(portrait or working shot, wide crop)
It's a Cycle, Not a Checklist
Ground, Lift, Align, Ascend — then back to Ground. Every round of change starts with an honest look at where things actually stand, not where the last cycle left off assuming nothing moved. That's the whole point: it repeats, on purpose.
Stage 1 · Ground
Start with what's actually true
Before anything changes, the current state has to be named honestly.
Not the version you'd tell a colleague, the real one — what's working, what's quietly draining you, what you've been talking yourself out of noticing. No plan built on an inaccurate starting point survives contact with real life. This is the least glamorous stage and the one most people skip. It's also the one that decides whether the other three actually work.
(grounded, still, honest)
Stage 2 · Lift
Build the first honest momentum
Small moves, made consistently, that get you off the ground.
This isn't a 90-day transformation montage. It's the first checkpoint that proves you can keep a promise to yourself — and the one after that, and the one after that. Momentum isn't a feeling you wait for, it's a byproduct of small honest moves stacking up faster than you can talk yourself out of them.
(motion, energy, early progress)
Stage 3 · Align
Point the momentum somewhere that matters
Motion without direction just burns energy.
Once there's real movement, it has to be checked against what actually matters to you — not what looks good from the outside, not what's expected. Align is where a lot of well-meaning effort gets quietly redirected, because it turns out the goal was borrowed from somewhere else.
(clarity, direction, a horizon)
Stage 4 · Ascend
Let the small moves compound
This is the payoff. It's also not the end.
Ascend is what the first three stages were building toward — real, visible change that holds up under pressure. But it feeds straight back into a new Ground, because the work that got you here isn't finished. It just changed shape. That's what makes it a cycle instead of a finish line.
(elevation, a wider view)
The Practice Underneath It: Checkpoint Thinking
Big goals are overwhelming, so the cycle doesn't run on big goals. It runs on checkpoints — small, honest, achievable moves that are easy to actually do and easy to tell the truth about afterward.
That's the same process behind everything I've built, starting with losing significant weight and keeping it off, not by burning everything down and starting over, but by stacking small sustainable moves over time. Checkpoint thinking is just that same logic applied on purpose, to whatever you're trying to move through the cycle next.
See It Applied in Coaching
The Sky Chase Cycle isn't a poster on the wall — it's the actual structure behind 1:1 coaching sessions.
Explore Coaching →