The Difference That Makes the Difference

How your brain transfers mastery from one part of your life to another

When I was five years old, I learned to water ski by standing on the front of my uncle’s skis.

Before long, I was skiing on my own, bumbling happily around the lake every summer. By the time I was sixteen, I wanted to take it further — I wanted to slalom.

That meant dropping one ski, balancing on the other, and tucking my free foot into the back slot of the remaining ski. Easier said than done. Time after time, I dropped the ski and fell. Again and again, I tried.

Until one day — I didn’t.

That magical moment when my foot slid perfectly into the protective cover, I felt the glide, the balance, and the freedom. I was slaloming! For all of 3 seconds that first time. The next time I stayed up longer. Each time I stayed up longer and longer — until I was carving across the lake and creating the most amazing rooster tails.

From the Water to the Slopes

Fast-forward to my twenties. My friend and I signed up for downhill skiing lessons. We arrived late, and by then the groups were already divided.

She was placed with the beginners, and I assumed I’d join her. But after a quick run, the instructor sent me up the chairlift with the advanced intermediate group.

I was stunned. Advanced? I had only skied a few times!

But there I was, facing moguls, following instructions, and making it down the mountain again and again.

At first, I couldn’t understand it. But then it hit me. Of course! I had been skiing most of my life — on water skis.

The balance, the edge control, the awareness of my body in motion — all of it transferred.

That was the difference that made the difference.

From Corporate to Coaching

Years later, when I transitioned from corporate into entrepreneurship, I completely forgot this principle.

I told myself:

“I don’t know how to be an entrepreneur.”
“I don’t have anything to offer.”
“Who am I to build a business or become a coach?”

What I dismissed — and now see so clearly — was everything I had already mastered in my corporate career:

• Having deep coaching conversations as an HR generalist and later as a manager
• Training and developing people, guiding hard conversations, and motivating performance
• Designing and implementing organizational competencies
• Standing at the front of the room delivering tough new pay-for-performance policies — and handling challenging questions with confidence

Those were not “just corporate skills.”
They were transferable human skills — communication, empathy, resilience, leadership — that became the very foundation of my coaching work.

I had been telling myself I was starting from zero…
But I was actually standing on top of decades of experience.

The Neuroscience of Transferable Skills

What happened on that mountain — and again in my career — wasn’t luck.
It was neuroscience.

Procedural Memory (Muscle Memory)
Our brains store how we do things in the basal ganglia and cerebellum. Once you’ve mastered a skill — like balancing on skis or leading a meeting — that memory doesn’t disappear. You can repurpose it in a new context.

Neural Plasticity
Your brain constantly adapts and repurposes old pathways for new challenges. When I shifted from water to snow — and later from corporate to coaching — my brain said, “Oh, I recognize this pattern. We’ve done this before.”

State Transfer
In NLP, we call it “state transfer.” The confidence, focus, and flow I felt on the water, in front of a room, or in a coaching conversation could all be consciously brought into new challenges. Emotional states are stored in the limbic system, and we can re-access them on purpose.

Mirror Neurons & Learning
Part of how we learn is through mirror neurons — specialized brain cells that fire both when we perform an action and when we observe it. Watching others lead, coach, or ski primed my brain for execution. When the opportunity came, I was ready.

A Note for Female Entrepreneurs

So many of the brilliant, ambitious women I work with underestimate themselves.

They step into entrepreneurship and think they’re starting from scratch — when in reality, they are standing on a mountain of skills, strategies, and strengths they’ve already mastered.

All those years of leading teams, raising families, managing crises, communicating with compassion, navigating corporate politics, and solving complex problems — those are entrepreneurial superpowers.

Your brain has already wired the pathways for resilience, leadership, influence, and courage.
You don’t need to become someone else to succeed as an entrepreneur.
You only need to remember who you already are — and transfer her into this new arena.

Because that is the difference that makes the difference.

Your Turn

What’s one skill you’ve carried from one part of your life into another that surprised you?
I’d love to hear your story.