What’s Underneath the Behaviour? Why Reflection Comes Before Change

Today I attended Made You Look: At Your Money at Raye Haus, and I went into the day expecting to think about money, business, visibility, growth and where I want The Educators Well to go. I absolutely did all of those things, but I came away thinking about something much bigger: patterns.

Patterns in the way we work, the way we make decisions, the way we handle money, the way we respond to pressure, the way we show up for other people and the expectations we place on ourselves. Most importantly, I found myself thinking about all the things happening underneath those patterns that other people never see.

It connected so strongly with something I have been thinking about within The WELL Framework and why Wellbeing First has always needed to be the first pillar.

Looking five years ahead

One of the exercises today asked us to think about where we want to be five years from now. For me, the answer is big. I would love to see The WELL Retreat under construction, The WELL Framework being implemented nationally, and a minimum of 500 Ripple Leaders working throughout services and communities across Australia.

I can see that vision so clearly, and I am not afraid of the fact that it is big. But another part of today’s conversation asked a different question: What lifestyle do you actually want?

That changes things.

Because one of the messages that really stayed with me today was that business success does not automatically equal personal wealth. I think we can take that even further, because business success certainly doesn’t automatically equal personal wellbeing either. You can build something successful, profitable and impressive while simultaneously creating a life that you don’t actually want to live.

For me, that matters enormously. I don’t just want The Educators Well to become successful. I want to build it in a way that allows me to have a life alongside it.

What we see is only the tip of the iceberg

One of the concepts we explored today was the idea of an iceberg. Above the water is the behaviour, the part everyone can see, but underneath that behaviour are our beliefs, experiences, stories and patterns.

In the context of money, that might mean exploring our own money story. What did I learn about money growing up? What does having money mean to me? Does it represent security, freedom, success or something else entirely? Do I struggle to charge appropriately for my work? Do I avoid looking at my finances when I feel anxious about them? Do I believe that earning more must mean working more? What happens when money does come in?

The numbers can tell us what is happening, but they don’t necessarily tell us why.

As I sat there listening to this conversation about money, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much the same concept applies to wellbeing.

We often focus on changing the behaviour we can see without ever asking what is sitting underneath it.

An educator might say yes to another responsibility when they are already overwhelmed. The behaviour is saying yes, but underneath it might be a belief that they cannot let people down. Someone might continue working long after they are exhausted because somewhere along the way they learned that being capable means pushing through. Another person might constantly step in to solve everyone else’s problems because being needed has become connected to their sense of value.

If we only try to change the behaviour above the water, the pattern underneath can remain exactly where it is.

This is why Wellbeing First comes first

The first pillar of The WELL Framework is W – Wellbeing First: Caring for me is caring for them.

I’ve been reflecting more deeply on why it needs to come first, and I think the answer is that before we can sustainably change anything, we need to understand the person we are trying to support. When it comes to our own wellbeing, that person is us.

That means reflection needs to go much deeper than simply asking, “How am I feeling today?” We need opportunities to get to know ourselves. What matters to me? What patterns do I repeat? What situations bring out the best in me? What drains me? What happens when I am under pressure? What do I naturally take responsibility for? What do I find difficult to let go of? What do I need to feel safe, supported and capable?

And perhaps one of the most important questions is: When do my greatest strengths begin working against me?

Someone who is incredibly caring may continually put themselves last. Someone who is highly dependable can become the person everyone relies on. Someone with high standards can find it impossible to feel that their work is finished. Someone who is empathetic can absorb the emotions of everyone around them. Someone who is passionate can keep pushing long after their body and mind are asking them to stop.

None of those strengths needs to disappear. But they may need protection around them.

We cannot put those protections in place until we recognise the pattern.

Reflection tools don’t need to define us

There are so many different tools available that can give us another lens through which to understand ourselves. DISC profiling, Personality Plus, strengths assessments, values exercises, wellbeing wheels, journalling, reflective conversations and even traditional systems such as BaZi can all prompt us to think about ourselves differently.

They are not all the same. They come from different foundations, traditions and evidence bases, and I don’t believe we need to accept every result as an objective truth about who we are.

For me, the value is much simpler: Did this help me notice something?

I have recently been exploring BaZi after a conversation introduced me to the concept. I’m not interested in using it as a prediction of what is going to happen in my life. What fascinated me was using it as another prompt for reflection. One of the descriptions talked about determination as a strength, but also invited consideration of what happens when that determination becomes rigidity or when we become too hard on ourselves.

That made me stop and think.

Determination has absolutely served me throughout my life, but when has that same determination caused me to continue when I needed to stop? When has being capable resulted in me carrying something that didn’t need to be mine? When has seeing a possibility made me feel responsible for making it happen?

That’s where I think these tools can become useful.

Instead of asking, “What does this say I am?”, we can ask, “What does this help me notice?”

Then we can go further. When does this pattern appear? What triggers it? Where might it have come from? How has it served me? How has it cost me? And now that I can see it, what do I want to do differently?

Reflection isn’t about finding another label for ourselves. It’s about developing enough self-awareness to have choices.

Today’s conversations kept coming back to what sits underneath

What fascinated me about Made You Look was that this same theme appeared repeatedly throughout the day, even though each speaker was approaching business from a completely different perspective.

Jacqueline Boyd spoke about knowing when, where and what your money is. Know your numbers. Understand what is happening, and have backup plans for your backup plans. What I took from that was the importance of awareness. We cannot make intentional decisions about something we don’t understand.

Janine Wilson talked about the idea of being a money architect and looking beneath the numbers at the systems, decisions and structures that determine whether wealth is actually being created or quietly lost along the way. Again, it wasn’t simply about what the numbers said. It was about understanding the architecture underneath them.

Bec Smith spoke about return on attention and turning visibility into revenue. If someone says, “I see you everywhere,” what are they actually seeing, and what did you make them think? That really stayed with me because visibility itself isn’t necessarily the outcome. The story matters, the connection matters, and importantly, the return isn’t always immediate. Something we do today might create a pathway to an opportunity weeks or months from now.

Then Vanessa Girard from Lyft Business Advisory talked about building, scaling and exiting, and there were two ideas from her session that particularly resonated with me. The first was the question, “If your business gave you complete freedom of choice, what would you choose?” The second was the idea of building the engine rather than being the engine.

That one really hit home.

I don’t want to be the engine

I have been intentionally thinking about this as I build The Educators Well.

I don’t want to create an organisation that becomes successful because Rachel simply keeps doing more. I want to create systems that allow people, knowledge, resources and opportunities to connect without requiring me to personally carry every piece.

Learn & Connect is a perfect example of what that can look like. I want educators to have access to an incredible range of people, ideas, expertise and reflective tools, but that doesn’t mean I need to become the expert in all of those things.

Instead, I can find someone who knows their area beautifully and have a 20–30 minute conversation with them. That conversation becomes a resource for educators. Their expertise remains theirs. They can connect educators to further support or services if appropriate, and the platform can manage much of what happens around it.

My job doesn’t have to be learning everything, teaching everything and maintaining everything. My role can be creating the structure that allows the right people and the right knowledge to connect.

That is something I have been intentionally building into the platform itself as well. Wherever possible, I want people to have ownership over their part of the ecosystem rather than everything having to come back through me. If somebody contributes something, I don’t want Rachel to have to manually manage that relationship forever. If something can be automated, self-managed or owned by the person it belongs to, I want to design it that way.

For me, this is what building the engine instead of being the engine looks like in practice.

It doesn’t mean I care less about the business. In many ways, it means thinking much more carefully about how I build it.

Maybe the question isn’t “How can I do this?”

One of the patterns I recognise in myself is that I see possibilities everywhere. I can have a conversation with someone and immediately see connections, ideas and opportunities that could come from it. That is something I value about myself, and I don’t want to lose it.

But reflection has helped me change the question I ask when those possibilities appear.

Instead of immediately thinking, “How can I do this?”, I am increasingly asking, “Who already does this beautifully, and how can I create the connection?”

I’m also asking, “Does this actually need me, or does it need a system?”

Those questions allow the strength to remain a strength without automatically turning every possibility into another responsibility.

And I think that is an important distinction when we talk about wellbeing. Wellbeing isn’t always about doing less. Sometimes it’s about doing things differently. It’s about recognising where our energy is most valuable and creating structures around ourselves that mean we don’t have to expend that energy everywhere.

Reflection should eventually change something

This is where I think reflective work can sometimes stop too early.

There isn’t much value in discovering that I am someone who takes on too much and then continuing to take on too much. There isn’t much value in recognising that I struggle with boundaries without considering which boundary needs to change. There isn’t much value in understanding that I have certain patterns around money while continuing to build financial systems that reinforce those patterns.

Awareness gives us information, but reflection gives us the opportunity to decide what we want to do with that information.

Maybe we need a boundary. Maybe we need a system. Maybe we need automation. Maybe we need to ask someone for help. Maybe we need to know our numbers. Maybe we need a backup plan for our backup plan. Maybe we need to recognise that something we’ve always considered one of our greatest strengths is also something we need to protect ourselves from overusing.

For educators, this is particularly important because so many of the qualities that make someone extraordinary at this work can also contribute to exhaustion when they are continually overused. Caring, empathy, dependability, flexibility, advocacy, creativity, responsibility and passion are beautiful qualities. The answer isn’t to become less caring or less passionate. The answer is to understand ourselves well enough to recognise when those strengths are starting to cost us.

Then we can put something in place before we reach the point where we have nothing left to give.

What would success look like if wellbeing was part of the measure?

Today’s conversation about business has left me with another question that I think reaches far beyond business:

What would I do differently if my wellbeing was part of the measure of success?

For an educator, that might mean asking what a sustainable career actually looks like. For a leader, it might mean considering whether the culture they are creating depends on people continually giving more than they have. For someone building a business, it might mean questioning whether growth that requires them to work every waking hour is really the kind of growth they want.

For me, it means that I still want the big dream.

I still want The WELL Retreat. I still want national implementation of The WELL Framework. I still want hundreds of Ripple Leaders creating positive change throughout the sector. I want The Educators Well to grow, create impact and become financially sustainable.

But I don’t want to arrive there having built something that requires me to sacrifice myself to keep it alive.

One of the other things I loved hearing today was that an exit doesn’t necessarily mean selling a business. Sometimes it means building something capable of operating while the founder steps away from the day-to-day running. Perhaps one day The Educators Well has a CEO. Perhaps my role looks completely different. Perhaps the organisation eventually becomes much bigger than the person who originally created it.

I don’t know what that future looks like yet, and I don’t need to.

But I can build with that possibility in mind now.

Wellbeing First isn’t about bubble baths

When we talk about educator wellbeing, I think we have to move beyond repeatedly telling educators to “look after themselves”.

Wellbeing First is not another instruction to practise self-care.

It starts much deeper than that.

It is about getting to know ourselves well enough to understand what supports us and what challenges us. It is noticing the patterns we have developed and becoming curious about what sits underneath them. It is recognising when our strengths serve us and when they begin to work against us. Then it is intentionally creating the boundaries, systems, relationships, environments and practices that allow us to continue being who we are without continually depleting ourselves.

This is why reflection is such an important part of The WELL Framework, and it is also why I want Learn & Connect to expose educators to different people, ideas, perspectives and tools. Not because someone else can tell you who you are, but because sometimes another perspective gives us the question we didn’t know we needed to ask.

You don’t have to agree with everything. You don’t have to identify with every profile, idea or framework. You don’t need another label.

Sometimes all we need is one moment where we stop and think:

Oh. I do that.

And then we get curious about why.

Because the behaviour we see is only the tip of the iceberg. The really interesting work begins when we are willing to look underneath it, understand what has shaped us, recognise the patterns we are carrying and decide which ones we want to carry forward.

That, to me, is where Wellbeing First really begins.

And perhaps the question I am taking away from today is one we can all sit with:

What would you do differently if your wellbeing was part of how you measured success?