The Pivot That Changes Everything: Moving From Away to Toward
What do you want to
move away from?
Getting clear on what you’ve had enough of is a good first step towards making change.
There is a moment most of us know, even if we've never named it.
It's the moment you look at your life — your job, your relationship, your living situation, your daily patterns — and something in you says: I cannot keep doing this. Not with anger, necessarily. Sometimes just with a quiet, bone-deep certainty that you've had enough.
That moment is more powerful than it gets credit for. The discomfort, the dissatisfaction, the "I don't want this anymore" — all of it is useful. It's the spark that wakes you up. The problem is what happens next.
Where People Get Stuck
I learned this concept years ago from my mentor and colleague Kyle Hermans, CEO of Oxford Leadership. I was working with Kyle through Gap Inc.'s Mindspark Innovation program, where I'd been certified as an Innovation Acrobat — a role that asked me to help people break old patterns and think differently. Kyle introduced me to the framework of Away vs. Toward motivation, and I've never stopped using it.
The concept comes from the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), where it's sometimes called a "metaprogram" — a filter through which we process experience and generate motivation. In NLP terms, Away motivation is driven by what you want to escape. Toward motivation is driven by what you want to create.
Here's the catch: Away motivation runs out.
Think about it. You're miserable in your job, so you start sending out resumes. You're exhausted by a relationship, so you start having hard conversations. You hate how you feel in your body, so you start making different choices. The energy to act comes from pain — and pain is a powerful fuel. But the moment things get slightly better, slightly more tolerable, the motivation fades. You've moved far enough away from the worst of it that the urgency disappears. And so does the momentum.
The NLP literature captures this precisely: Away motivation can be described as the force that gets people moving but rarely gets them all the way to where they want to go. You might even recognize the pattern — the person who quits a job only to land in a similar dynamic somewhere else, or who loses weight and then gains it back once the discomfort has eased. Moving away from something is not the same as moving toward something better.
What the Research Says
The science behind this is substantial, and it maps directly onto the NLP framework. Psychologists distinguish between approach motivation — the drive toward a desired outcome — and avoidance motivation — the drive away from something unwanted. Decades of research, including neuroimaging studies published in journals like Frontiers in Psychology and PLOS ONE, show that these two motivational systems activate differently in the brain.
Participants in approach-goal conditions report stronger positive emotions and greater intrinsic motivation than those focused on avoidance goals, who tend to experience more anxiety and disappointment. In other words, it's not just that Toward motivation feels better — it actually generates a different internal experience that sustains engagement over time.
With Toward motivation, your internal representations are of where you want to get to — a dream of reaching your goal — so even when your current situation is difficult, you stay in a resourceful state because you are pulled toward a positive future.
Research suggests roughly 40% of us are predominantly Toward-motivated and another 40% are predominantly Away-motivated, with about 20% drawing on both in roughly equal measure. This means a large portion of people default to pain avoidance as their primary engine for change — which is not a character flaw, just a pattern worth examining.
The Pivot
Here's what Kyle taught me, and what I now teach others: you don't have to choose between Away and Toward. You use them in sequence.
Away energy is your starting point. Let it wake you up. Let it show you what no longer serves you. Get clear and honest about what you've had enough of — the dynamics that drain you, the situations that shrink you, the patterns that keep repeating. That clarity is real information, and it deserves to be honored.
Then — and this is the work — you pivot.
You turn to face the other direction and you ask: What do I want instead? Not the absence of what's bad, but the presence of what's good. Not "I want to stop feeling trapped" but "I want to feel expansive and purposeful." Not "I want to get away from this relationship" but "I want to be in a partnership where I feel seen and challenged."
The pivot is where transformation lives.
How I've Lived This
I have made this pivot more times than I can count. Leaving a long corporate career that had given me so much but stopped fitting. Moving from an identity that others had shaped to one I was choosing. Building a practice that felt like mine. Each time, the Away clarity came first — and each time, the work was in staying with the discomfort long enough to get clear about what I was actually moving toward.
I've found that the pivot rarely happens in a flash. It's more like slowly turning a ship. You can feel when it starts, though. The energy shifts from reactive to generative. You stop talking about what you're escaping and start talking about what you're building. The future starts to feel like something you're walking toward, not just something you're hoping to stumble into once you've gotten far enough away from the past.
And every time I've done that work with intention — naming the Toward with specificity and feeling — something in me settles and sharpens at the same time.
What I See in My Clients
As a coach, I witness this pattern constantly. Someone arrives with a clear story about what's wrong — the job that's killing them, the boss who doesn't see them, the team dynamic that's broken. That story is important, and I listen to all of it.
But at some point, I ask: "What do you want instead?"
The pause that follows is often profound. Many people have not asked themselves this question with any real rigor. They've been so focused on the Away — so fluent in the language of what's wrong — that the Toward has remained blurry or unexamined.
When they find it, something shifts. The problem doesn't disappear, but it stops being the destination. It becomes the doorway. The discomfort that drove them to change becomes the catalyst that points them toward something worth moving for.
That shift — from reactive to intentional, from fleeing to moving toward — is one of the most reliable turning points I witness in coaching. It doesn't always feel dramatic. Sometimes it feels like exhaling.
The Practice
If you recognize yourself in any of this, here's an invitation.
Start with Away. Write it down. Be honest and thorough. What have you had enough of? What no longer fits? What are you done tolerating? Let yourself say it clearly, without softening it.
Then pivot. Take the same honesty and turn it forward. For each Away item, ask: what is the Toward version? What would the opposite feel like? What would you be choosing, not just escaping?
The Toward doesn't have to be a complete blueprint. It just needs to be specific enough that it pulls you — that when you think about it, something in you leans in.
That lean is the compass. Follow it.
Tres Jiménez is an executive coach, facilitator, and organizational consultant. She works with leaders and teams navigating change — helping them move from stuck to clear, and from clear to forward. You can find her at www.tresjimenez.com.
Moving towards what we want is the positive clarity that works.
Tres Jiménez is an executive coach, facilitator, and organizational consultant. She works with leaders and teams navigating change — helping them move from stuck to clear, and from clear to forward. You can find her at www.tresjimenez.com.
Photos taken in her beautiful creative Portand studio with Shawnalee Anderton
