Thrive on the Loop

Thrive on the Loop: Learning, Earning, Yearning, Returning

Leadership Insights for Your Next Season | October 2025 

We’ve often been told that life unfolds in neat, predictable stages: first you learn, then you earn, and eventually you retire. It’s tidy. It’s linear. And it’s also not how life really works.

Life doesn’t move forward in straight lines. It shifts, breaks apart, reforms. We encounter detours and delays, seasons of acceleration and seasons of stillness. Growth isn’t a single climb to the top; it’s a loop — one we travel again and again in different ways and at different depths.

That’s why I believe in the power of learning, earning, yearning, and returning — not as isolated stages, but as a continuous life cycle that helps us stay grounded, resilient, and purpose-driven no matter what changes come.

Beyond the Old Model

The phrase learn–earn–return has been used in leadership and entrepreneurial circles for decades. Author Alan Loy McGinnis popularized it as a framework for living a meaningful life. Global entrepreneur Bert Twaalfhoven even titled his autobiography Learn Earn Return, emphasizing that a life well lived involves continual growth, stewardship, and contribution.

Those ideas are powerful. But they often stop at three phases — as if learning ends after our education, earning defines our middle years, and returning happens only once we retire. In reality, thriving requires more than three chapters. It calls for a lifelong rhythm that cycles back on itself, strengthening us as we go.

That’s where the idea of yearning comes in — the inner pull toward purpose, meaning, and something greater than ourselves. Yearning keeps us awake and searching. It draws us beyond what we know into what we’re meant to become. Without yearning, learning stagnates, earning becomes empty, and returning can feel like obligation rather than joy.

Scripture captures this beautifully:

“At night I yearn for you with all my heart; in the morning my spirit reaches out to you.”

— Isaiah 26:9 TPT

Yearning keeps the loop alive. It’s what pulls us into the next round of learning, inspires us to steward our earning with integrity, and infuses our returning with vision and hope.

The CLAST Life: Building Strength from the Fragments

My own framework for this approach is something I call CLAST Life — short for Connect, Learn, Activate, Serve, Thrive. The name is intentional. In geology, a clast is a fragment of rock that, under pressure and time, binds with others to form something new and enduring. That’s how strong, purposeful lives are formed too — not by avoiding disruption, but by allowing each fragment of experience to fuse into something stronger.

Living the CLAST Life means embracing the cycle instead of resisting it. It means connecting to purpose and people, staying open to learning, activating what we know in meaningful ways, serving others, and thriving not just in outcomes but in the process itself.

And it means moving through the loop of learning, earning, yearning, returning not once, but continually — each pass shaping us, refining us, strengthening us.

What It Looks Like in Practice

This isn’t just a lofty idea. It’s deeply practical. Here’s what it can look like in real life:

● Learning is more than formal education. It’s staying curious, seeking feedback, and evolving your perspective. Every challenge and transition is a classroom.

● Earning is more than money. It’s about stewardship — using your resources, influence, and opportunities wisely and purposefully.

● Yearning is about alignment. It’s staying rooted in values and purpose, and allowing desire for what’s right and meaningful to guide decisions.

● Returning is about impact. It’s mentoring, giving, serving, and contributing long before the end of your career or life. It’s creating ripple effects now.

And the beauty of the loop is that it’s self-reinforcing. What you learn informs how you earn. What you earn enables how you return. What you return deepens your yearning. And what you yearn for fuels your next season of learning.

Thriving Through Change

In a world defined by constant change — economic shifts, technological disruption, personal transitions — thriving isn’t about reaching a fixed destination. It’s about building the strength and agility to move with change without losing your core.

That’s what the loop offers. It’s not a ladder with an endpoint; it’s a rhythm that keeps you growing. It equips you to face setbacks without losing direction, to navigate transitions with clarity, and to keep contributing even as your circumstances evolve.

When we live this way, we stop seeing growth as something that happens once. We start seeing it as something that happens always. We don’t wait for the “right time” to give back — we do it now. We don’t assume yearning is for the young — we cultivate it for a lifetime. And we don’t treat learning as a phase — we live it as a posture.

Because thriving isn’t about avoiding pressure. It’s about letting pressure form something new and enduring — just like clastic rock.

So here’s the invitation: step into the loop. Learn with intention. Earn with integrity. Yearn with purpose. Return with generosity.

Connect with me today and take Step 1 — I’ll guide you through the CLAST Life framework so you can start crafting a roadmap to thrive in your next season.

Sources & References

● Alan Loy McGinnis – quoted widely on “Learn, Earn, Return.”

● Bert W. M. Twaalfhoven, Learn Earn Return: The Journey of a Global Entrepreneur (2013).

● Isaiah 26:9 TPT