I was driving to my office space the other day for the last time, and I had the opportunity to look at the world with new eyes. I had been out earlier in the day, and ended up taking the route I used to take before I moved back in with my beloved at the end of May.

Driving down the road that I used to take regularly, I began noticing things I had never seen before. I saw houses I’d never noticed, and features on houses I’d never noticed when I was routinely taking this road. None of these things were new, just new to me. This day, I was taking the road less traveled, and my eyes were opened in a new way. And I was feeling reflective, as I prepared to close one chapter of my life and begin another.

It made me wonder what else do we miss when we’re operating on auto-pilot?

Perhaps this experience was heightened for me because I’m in the process of a massive re-branding effort. I’m looking at myself and my business with new eyes. I’m not changing what I do, but how I talk about what I do. I’m also changing how I work, and have decided to work primarily with groups over the phone and in workshops and retreats. It rendered the need for my office space obsolete.

In working with my marketing coach, I realized that in the past 18 months I went through a really common experience and emerged on the other side in a really uncommon way. In July 2007, my partner of 20 years and I separated and were apart for nearly a year. I was turning 40 that August, and as I reassessed my relationship I found it sorely lacking. So many of my friends and clients have experienced this; some leave to start fresh, but many stay in a stale relationship for a variety of reasons. That wasn’t an option for me; as a spiritual life coach I help my clients live their most magnificent lives. I would have considered myself a fraud to settle for anything less than extraordinary in my own life. So I began this part of my journey. I took myself off auto-pilot and started really looking at my life. What I found was surprising. While I was in the relationship I was so busy pointing an accusatory finger at what my partner was doing wrong, that I didn’t notice how I was disrespecting and not loving myself.

Our time apart was a huge blessing; it gave us each the opportunity to focus on the work we needed to do in order to love ourselves more deeply. It gave us each the power to see our whole selves—the good, the bad and the ugly, and to learn to love it all. It allowed us to take responsibility for ourselves in a really big way. And in the end, because we were both committed to doing the work, we were able to reunite. It doesn’t really matter that we reunited; what matters is that we did the work and returned to love. The icing on the cake is that we were able to reunite. And I’ve decided that it’s time to share what I learned during that experience with others.