A reflection by Dr Ben Koh, Founder of Coach Masters Academy, on the quiet power of consistency — how staying faithful to what is right transforms effort into legacy.
This reflection traces fifteen years of learning, unlearning, and becoming — from understanding how the mind thinks to seeing how the human being experiences. It speaks to anyone walking a long path of growth, where the rewards are invisible until they are undeniable.
When I first began this journey fifteen years ago, I believed mastery was about acquiring skill. I was wrong. Mastery, I’ve since learned, is about staying — long enough for truth to mature through you.
” Consistency is not repetition — it is the conscious act of choosing, again and again, to live in coherence with what matters most. “
In 2010, I began exploring what makes the human mind shift its perception of reality. I saw patterns of thought moving like chess pieces across a board — strategic, calculated, brilliant — yet missing life. My dissertation confirmed what I had intuitively sensed: the mind constructs meaning through narrative.
This was the beginning of my journey toward transformational coaching mastery, exploring how awareness, perception, and language shape human experience. By 2015, I thought I had it figured out.
But something remained absent. I understood how the mind thinks, but I did not yet understand how the human being feels while thinking. The knowledge was sharp, but it lacked pulse. That awareness marked the first quiet fracture in certainty — the beginning of a longer search that would demand not only intellect, but presence.
” True transformation doesn’t happen by chance or in a moment of inspiration — it happens through years of consistent alignment between what we value and what we do. “
The next decade became a period of disciplined wandering. I turned to Gestalt Awareness, Existential Theory, and the study of mirror neurons to understand how mind and heart could speak in one language. I wanted to know how experience could be felt as it is being known. Slowly, my focus shifted from analysing to attending, from decoding to seeing.
I discovered that true transformational coaching begins when the coach learns to see — not just to understand. The watershed moment arrived when our advanced training replaced its cornerstone from “Namaste” to “Sawubona” — I see you. That single word change represented years of evolution.
“Namaste” honoured the sacred in the other. “Sawubona” invited a different order of meeting: not reverence from a distance, but recognition through presence. It was no longer enough to understand the mind; I had to see the person whose mind I was meeting.
This transformation did not happen overnight. It took nearly a decade of rigorous discipline — investigating, studying, training, failing, refining, and returning again and again to what I did not yet understand.
This phase of coach development became my laboratory for understanding what it truly means to coach for transformation. Each year brought new layers of humility. There were moments of exhaustion, doubt, and even despair. But I stayed faithful to the work — not because I was sure of success, but because the work itself felt true.
” Becoming who we are is not a single choice but the accumulation of every right choice made consistently over time. “
Mastery, I discovered, is not an arrival. It is a long apprenticeship to one’s own becoming. The fruits appear late, often invisible for years, until one day they quietly announce themselves through others. People begin to recognise your work, your clarity, your presence — and you realise these are not trophies, but traces of your long consistency.
Consistency is not glamorous. It does not make headlines or produce quick results. It is slow cultivation — the daily tending of a seed you once planted, even when nothing seems to grow. For fifteen years, I kept tending that seed. Now, it bears fruit.
But here is the deeper truth: the fruit is not the end. Every fruit carries new seeds, each capable of becoming another tree. What began as a single act of discipline becomes a legacy of life — one tree creating many, one insight multiplying into a forest.
That is the reward of consistency: not achievement, but continuity. The work you nurture with integrity does not merely succeed; it reproduces. It grows beyond you, sustaining others long after you’ve stopped counting the seasons.
This is what transformational coaching ultimately embodies — not a set of techniques, but a way of being that enables growth to keep regenerating through others.
If you find yourself in the middle of your own long process — uncertain, unseen, unsure if your effort matters — take heart. It does. The time between planting and harvest is never wasted. It is the time that shapes who you are becoming.
Stay consistent in doing the right thing in the right way. Keep tending your seed. Keep learning what it means to see — truly see — yourself and others.
Because one day, you will look around and realise: the single fruit tree you planted has become a forest. And that forest will speak for you, long after words are gone.
Every transformation begins with a decision — the quiet resolve to stay faithful to what feels true, even when the outcome is uncertain. This song, “I Decide”, captures the same spirit that guided my fifteen-year journey: courage, consistency, and the freedom to choose again each day.
May it remind you that becoming is not about speed or success — it is about the simple, powerful act of deciding who you will be today.
Dr Ben Koh is the Founder of Coach Masters Academy, an ICF-accredited institution advancing the science and practice of transformational coaching. His pioneering work in integrating cognitive, existential, and dialogic disciplines has earned him an Honorary Doctorate in Applying Transformative Learning to Advancing Human Potential.
Explore CMA’s Professional Coaching Training Education to continue your journey of transformation.
