Summary: When a mentor who made a difference transitions, it prompts reflection on the core of how life has changed. The words from the song “Wicked” have been quietly ringing in my ears. For Jean Houston, “knowing you has changed me for the better.”
Change Happens in Unexpected Ways
“Something is wrong here.” That was my thought, many years ago, as I stepped into a Manhattan ballroom for my first workshop with Jean Houston. There were no neat rows of chairs, only a few that lined the perimeter of the huge room while people lounged on yoga mats or sat cross-legged on the bare floor. Some were in quiet conversation. Others simply waited.
My structured, practical, rather “uptight” self nearly turned around and walked out. This did not look like serious learning. It looked like organized chaos.
Then Jean entered. Tall, commanding, and deeply present, she carried the kind of quiet authority that changed the energy in the room before she said a single word. A hush fell. And then she began.
No, not simply to speak, but to engage us, and challenge us to think beyond what we had been taught about human potential. By the end of that weekend, I was hooked. Not only on Jean Houston’s work.
I was hooked on the possibility that life could be richer, larger, and far more enticing than the narrow, proper, white-picket-fence definition of living I had quietly accepted as my destiny. I had entered that ballroom expecting a workshop, but instead, I walked through a doorway. The memories from that time are now flooding my day.
On May 10, 2026, the world lost Jean Houston, one of the great pioneers of the human potential movement. For many, she was a philosopher, scholar, teacher, and visionary. For me, she was also one of the mentors who helped expand my life at a moment when I deeply needed it.
When My Hand Rose Before Fear Could Stop It
At the close of that weekend, which felt more like a decade of growth than a few days, Jean asked who would volunteer to help lead her newly forming The Possible Society program. When she mentioned my hometown of Philadelphia as one of the primary sites, I silently instructed my hand to stay exactly where it belonged, quietly by my side. It had other ideas.
Before my cautious mind could intervene, my hand shot up. Jean looked directly at me, scanning the hundreds gathered in that room. In her intuitive and deeply perceptive way, she seemed to recognize something I had not yet fully seen in myself. She asked me to stand so others from the Pennsylvania area could connect with me and help bring The Possible Society to life.
What I did not realize then was that they were not only helping bring a program to life. They were helping bring me to life.
At the same time, my two daughters were in college, stepping into their own futures. Watching them grow into independence quietly challenged me to do the same. After a painful divorce, I was not simply rebuilding a life. I was learning how to reclaim one.
That season became one of the most pivotal chapters of my life.
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The Possible Society, The Wizard of Oz, and Leadership Hidden in Story
At the center of the program was The Wizard of Oz, complete with its own cardboard Yellow Brick Road for us to literally walk. Jean understood something many leaders still overlook: Stories often teach what logic alone cannot.
Dorothy’s journey was never simply about getting home. It is a journey we all must take, about courage, discernment, identity, shadow work, community. And perhaps most importantly, discovering that what we search for externally may already live within us.
The Scarecrow wanted a brain.
The Tin Man longed for a heart.
The Lion searched for courage.
Looking back, I can smile at the irony. Years later, my own work would center around head, heart, and gut, the very inner wisdom I was first beginning to recognize through those symbolic lessons. At the time, I simply did not yet call them GLIMMERS.
Beyond Logic: Where Leadership and Human Potential Expands
Jean Houston’s work opened one of the earliest doorways into the deeper foundations of my own work.
Through her integration of mythology, ritual, psychology, anthropology, and experiential learning, and through the influence of thinkers like Joseph Campbell, Margaret Mead, and her husband Robert Masters, I began to understand human behavior in broader and more connected ways. Not as isolated events. But as patterns and connections.
That perspective later became foundational to my work in family systems, leadership development, stress, and neuroscience. Long before The GLIMMERS Effect™ had a name, its roots were quietly forming:
- How family patterns show up at work
- Why stress hijacks rational thought
- How nervous systems shape trust, conflict, and culture
- The fact that behavior is rarely random
- And what appears “difficult” is often patterned
What looks like dysfunction is often adaptation under pressure. Jean helped me think beyond rigid logic. I began to see how psychology and psychotherapy sometimes focused more on labels and classifications than on understanding the complexity of whole human beings.
Jean had a rare gift. She could challenge you deeply while making you laugh, which often made the hardest truths easier to hear. With her warmth, humor, and impeccable timing, she showed how to move into deeper possibility, and what it truly means to be human. That changed everything.
Leadership Is More Than Strategy
Many leaders are taught to trust only data, logic, and measurable outcomes. Important? Absolutely. Enough? Not even close.
Jean reminded me that growth also requires:
- Imagination
- Reflection
- Embodied experience
- Story
- Inner listening
And the courage to stay in uncertainty long enough for insight to emerge. Today, neuroscience confirms what Jean and many early pioneers sensed intuitively: Human beings are wired not only for analysis, but for narrative, emotion, connection, and relational meaning.
Leadership is not just strategic thinking, it is pattern recognition. Emotional regulation. Learning to pause before reaction. And recognizing that what appears to be a workplace problem may actually be an old survival pattern wearing a modern suit.
That insight became central to my life’s work.
From Possibility to The GLIMMERS Effect™
At the time, I had not yet created The GLIMMERS Effect™. But looking back, I can clearly see the seeds. Jean helped me understand that transformation often begins with what first appears small: questions, symbols, moments of discomfort. Often there is a shift in awareness, or a story that lands differently.
Perhaps one has a quiet knowing. Or what I call a glimmer. Today I often say, “Patterns repeat until they are complete.” Jean Houston helped me understand that completion begins when we dare to look beyond the obvious.
A Final Thank You to Jean
Some mentors teach through instruction. Others teach by widening the room. Jean Houston did that for me.
She expanded my thinking beyond logic into deeper inquiry, beyond reaction into reflection, and beyond limitation into possibility. For that, I remain deeply grateful. Sometimes a GLIMMER does not arrive as certainty. It arrives as discomfort.
For me it was, a strange room and a raised hand. Bigger, it became a life redirected. Jean Houston reminded me that possibility often begins before certainty. Mine began in a Manhattan ballroom, and I have been following that deeper path ever since.
It made all the difference in the world when this brilliant, creative woman pointed toward me, and I was honored to become one of the early pioneers in that work with her. Her work remains timeless. And for that, I remain grateful.
To your success,
Sylvia Lafair
