This is where that changes
Through a creative self-expression practice that reveals the hidden narratives running the show.
Organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich found that while 95% of people believe they are self-aware, only 10-15% actually are. Her research also suggests that introspection alone can mislead us; the mind tends to invent plausible explanations that feel true but aren’t always accurate.
What that points to, in my experience, is this: when we examine ourselves using the same conditioned thinking that shaped us, we tend to find the same conditioned answers. The gap isn’t a character flaw. It’s structural. Most of us were never given the tools to truly examine what we know about ourselves, and whether it’s true.
We need a different entry point.
That entry point is creative self-expression — because it quiets the rehearsed mind long enough for something truer to surface.
Every question we ask points toward the same one: who am I, really, beneath what I’ve been shaped to be?
Here is an illustration of one experience working with a client:
I once worked with someone who shared all the reasons why she felt stuck in her career — fear, perfectionism, ‘not being ready.’ When I asked her to draw how the stuckness felt, she drew a tiny figure pressed against a wall. She realized she wasn’t afraid; she was waiting for permission. Her intellect had been giving her familiar answers. Her creative expression revealed another aspect that she discerned was most true. From there, she designed her next steps.
Source: Eurich, T. (2017). Insight. Crown Business.
When we’re struggling in life, we tend to do one of three things: purchase a self-help book, find a therapist who offers a safe space, or join a community of people who understand what we’re going through. There is value in all of them. And yet each one has a limitation worth naming.
Self-Help Books — The problem isn’t the information. It’s that we filter everything through the very thinking we’re trying to change. Examining the lens you’re looking through while you’re still looking through it is one of the hardest things a person can do.
Talk Therapy — Relief without a mechanism for integration means the same patterns resurface. You leave the room feeling better and return to the same life.
Community — Without shared agreements about how we engage and hold space with each other, it becomes an echo chamber — or worse, an audience where you’re witnessed but never invited to look deeper.
Without a practice of looking inward, most of us keep going the way we’ve been going. Not falling apart. Simply maintaining. Compromising in ways we’ve stopped noticing and hanging our hopes on someday events: retirement, an empty nest, a life event that will finally make everything you’re going through feel worth it.
Someday has a way of arriving and feeling surprisingly similar to today.
The unanswered questions don’t disappear. They get quieter. And so do we.
What works is learning to reach beneath what the books, the sessions, and the groups couldn’t reach to sense what’s genuinely there, examine it honestly, and over time trust what you find. That’s not a solo endeavor. It’s a guided practice.
We’ve spent years building careers, raising families, and being available and reliable for everyone who needed us. And somewhere along the way, we stopped earnestly paying attention; our days blended into the next, and the unanswered questions were pushed aside.
Beneath all the doing, the performing, and the producing, hundreds of questions are still there. This is the practice where we listen for answers, from the inside.
I didn’t find this work in a book. I lived it first.
In 2015, something shifted; a knowing I’d been quietly carrying since high school finally got loud enough to act on.
For years, I treated personal growth the way many of us do, spot-treating my problems like stains as they appeared. At times I engaged with a therapist when things got difficult. I turned to a self-help book when I needed to dig into answers and friends when I needed a sounding board for what went wrong. Each of them helped in their own way. And yet there was something quietly deflating about always reaching outward and still feeling like I couldn’t quite get it right. Like the resolution was always one more book, one more session, one more conversation away.
One day I started thinking about how I tended to gain really good ideas while creating, and I began my earnest journey to research my hypothesis: is it possible to process and heal through creative self-expression? There is a lot of study and literature out there. The short answer is yes.
This was when things truly shifted for me: the consistent creative work I had been doing all my life doodling, painting, drawing, jewelry making, quilling, crafting. I noticed my brain would fire differently. Clarity would surface that no amount of talking had reached.
In 2017, I launched this practice and got it wrong the first time. Training in Intentional Creativity® taught me that this work has to be fluid, anchored in curiosity, not diagnostically rigid or overly analytical. That shift changed everything about how I guide others.
I created Change by Design because it worked for me first.
What if you trusted your own read of a situation — not perfectly, but enough?
What if the self-criticism got quieter? Not gone — but no longer running the show?
What if you stopped needing to be the reliable one, the strong one, the good one — to feel worthy?
What if small things started landing differently again?
This is what we’re moving toward. Our Inner Knowing.
It all starts with a story, a situation, or a topic.
A pad of paper, a journal, or a canvas.
Then an inquiry or two to contemplate allows the conscious mind to engage.
For example, we explore questions like:
With a pen, marker, or paintbrush, as we make shapes and draw doodles or things while sitting with the inquiry, the conscious mind stays occupied, and sometimes, as the practice deepens, something unexpected begins to happen. The subconscious starts to participate. Thoughts arrive at a fast pace—images surface. Ideas organize themselves, add and subtract, connect in ways that thinking alone rarely produces. It doesn’t happen every time — especially early in the practice. But when it does, it’s quite an experience.
The creative practice is fluid by design, like water; it finds its own level. Because self-awareness rarely flows all neat-n-tidy. It changes like splashes, spills, flips, and floods.
We wade in and flow with the current, sensing until something feels true enough to move forward with — knowing it will deepen as we do.
Working with Kami Pollvogt has been a great blessing to both my husband and me. She is gentle, compassionate, and a great listener. She helped us focus on our communication processes; between ourselves, yes, but also with my parents so that we could understand their negative behaviors and the best way to respond to them. Because of her inputs, we have made several positive changes. Kami also worked with me on my personal goals. I love the creative ideas that she used to help me learn key concepts and apply them to my life. Along with my strong faith and Kami’s respect for my values, I feel I have made great improvements. I highly recommend Kami to anyone seeking support or growth.
Veronica R
Working with Kami has definitely taught me to move through my personal fears and blocks. Her natural creativity is fun, bright, and very intriguing. While working with Kami, she created a safe place to express and tap into my own natural creativity. A part of me that I haven’t engaged in, in a long time. Her kindness and genuine spirit allowed me to express myself in starting my own business, also co-ownership of another business. I have broken through many of my blocks learning to be overcome my fear of lack of creativity. Kami has blessed me with a new way of life for myself and others.
Madison L.
It’s so refreshing when my ideas are valued. Kami listened to me about what I hoped for in my future. Together we worked on a plan to set me on the right path toward realizing my goals. Kami is so good at what she does! Thank you, Kami!
Kate M.
Start A Free Conversation
A simple, no-pressure call to get acquainted and explore whether working together makes sense.
Design Your Path
Together we’ll shape a creative practice built around you, your life, your pace, your truth.
Begin Your Practice
Together we’ll move through a series of sessions designed around what you most want to explore and what you most want to change.
A weekly letter worth opening with stories, a creative image, and a quiet question or two that meet you where you are.
Not a newsletter. A creative practice that lands in your inbox.