Grow Your Own Way
A Personal Message from Me... A Guide to The Growth Cycle™
There’s a quote I love, by Reif Larsen, who said:
“A map does not just chart — it unlocks and formulates meaning. It forms bridges between here and there, between disparate ideas that we did not know were previously connected.“
That is exactly what you have access to with The Growth Cycle™.
Not just any map. Your map.
I’m Kate Vanden Bos, and I’ve been developing this work for well over a decade. I refer to it every day, so it’s probably more accurate to say that it’s been developing me over the last decade!
At this point, I genuinely can’t remember life without it, and I don’t want to. It has changed things for me in all of the best ways. The kind of change that’s very subtle at first and then, one day, you look back and realize you can’t find that old version of yourself anywhere - no matter how hard you look! You’re not sure exactly when she left, and honestly, now you don’t want to invite her back.
She’s just not YOU anymore…
The Growth Cycle™ started as a personal obsession and became a life’s work.
I think I can trace the wiggly thread of how it originated back to a swimming pool… in London.
I was in my early thirties, studying naturopathic osteopathy, which at its core, is all about getting your body out of its own way so it can flow and heal itself.
That’s what I was immersed in every single day, and I believed in it with every cell in my being. And yet, before class, I was in the pool across the street every morning, doing exactly the opposite.
I was all-in on the self-improvement mantra of discipline and hard work leads to success and achievement.
Chasing my next personal best, determined to “get fitter,” “get stronger,” “get better” - in literally EVERY area of my life!
But swimming didn’t come naturally to me.
I’m looking at all these people in the other lanes that, from the outside, are making it look so easy and effortless. They’re flowing length upon length, and I’m over here fighting with the water. After 20 lengths, feeling exhausted and very frustrated. (Not a good feeling for a Type A achiever!)
So I’d tell myself, “You just have to work harder. The water is stronger than you right now, so you need to become stronger than the water”.
As you can imagine, that did not make it any easier, and I did not look any more graceful doing it!
And then one day, somebody handed me a book called The Art of Swimming, which applies the Alexander Technique to your swimming stroke, and what I read changed something in me.
Instead of forcing my body through the water, I was encouraged to work with it. To allow it to support me, stop resisting the flow of the water and start aligning with it, instead. I was now collaborating with the water!
And just like that, I went from struggling through twenty lengths to gliding through sixty the next day. Feeling better, stronger, and more energized at the end than I was at the beginning. Super small tweaks, and a new way of approaching the same task, and suddenly I was flying up and down that swim lane.
That was the moment. I wasn’t working harder, I had just stopped overriding the natural intelligence that was already there.
And I thought — if this is true in a swimming pool, where else is it true in my life? In my work? In my relationships? In the way I was trying to grow and build and show up in my life?
I’d been approaching all of it the same way I’d been approaching the water - with brute force, more effort, learning more, being better - which just leads to more resistance.
I say all of this as a true “recovering think-a-holic”. Overthinking was not just a pastime for me — it was practically a profession! And my identity was firmly wrapped up in being the one who solved the problems, got the job done, knew the right answer when asked. The one that everyone could rely on.
What that moment in the pool taught me was that it didn’t have to be SO HARD, ALL THE TIME.
Ease (or literally “going with the flow”) doesn’t have to mean “doing less”. It means getting into alignment, so you can do more - with less effort. And that’s literally the basis of everything that you learn working with The Growth Cycle™.
A few years later, I was up a mountain in Colorado, studying nature-based coaching and shamanic practices, and something clicked in my mind’s eye. And The Growth Cycle™ idea was born.
Ideas and concepts started layering in one piece at a time, over years. Eight years, actually, at the time of writing this. There have been numerous iterations of this framework as it’s gone through its own Growth Cycle™ journey - and I’m sure it will continue to!
What you now have access to is a 12-part map of your own personal evolution — one that you cycle through every year of your life, whether you know it or not - and all of the online resources that you can use to self-guide your own journey.
I began building this because I needed it in my life. And I kept building it because, once I started using it with private clients, it took on a whole new purpose and meaning for me.
Every year, the journey gets richer. Every time you cycle through, you’ll notice something that you’d missed before.
That’s the nature of a spiral, you will return to the same point at each rotation, but now always from a higher perspective. That is true growth.
My wish for you is simply that this framework becomes a companion on your journey, and it’s always there to refer to when you need it.
That it supports you and works alongside your own internal compass, so you never feel lost or disoriented about where you are in your own life.
‘To thine own self be true.’ as Shakespeare’s Hamlet famously said, and truer words were never spoken!
Welcome to The Growth Cycle™.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE GROWTH CYCLE™
→ MyGrowthCycle.com
© 2025–present Katherine Vanden Bos. All rights reserved. The Growth Cycle™ is a trademark of Katherine Vanden Bos. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed without prior written permission. Content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute professional medical, psychological, legal, or financial advice. This content may not be used to train artificial intelligence or machine learning models.
Life: By Design | katevandenbos.com