Career & Self-Leadership Insights

I want to offer you a reframe that changed how I think about moments of stagnation. When you feel stuck - in a job, in a pattern, in a version of your life that no longer fits - what's actually happening, most of the time, is that you're in an unmade decision. Not stuck. Deciding. Stuck implies external force. Something holding you in place that you can't move. But in most cases - not all, but most - what's keeping you where you are is a decision that hasn't been made yet. To

At some point, staying the same becomes more uncomfortable than changing. But before that point - in all the time before that point - there's a particular kind of courage required. The courage to admit, even just to yourself, that you want something different from the life you've been building. Not because the life is bad. Not because you're ungrateful. But because you've grown into someone whose needs and desires and sense of what matters have shifted - and the life hasn't k

This is the conversation that happens in coaching rooms, not in public. Because it's uncomfortable to say out loud: I've achieved a lot and I'm still not satisfied. There's guilt in it. There's a fear of sounding ungrateful or entitled. There's the voice in your head that says: there are people who would kill for your problems. And so you keep it to yourself and feel vaguely ashamed of an experience that is, in reality, incredibly common among high-achievers. Here's what the

You probably do financial audits. You track spending, check your bank balance, make sure the outgoings don't exceed the income. But how often do you do an energy audit? Because your energy - physical, mental, emotional - works the same way. There are things that add to it and things that subtract from it. And if you've never consciously tracked that, you're probably running your most important resource on blind faith and caffeine. An energy audit is simple in concept and surp

If you grew up thinking leaders were loud, decisive, visionary extroverts - you may have spent years quietly discounting yourself. Maybe you're thoughtful rather than fast-talking. Maybe you process before you respond. Maybe your leadership style is quieter - build trust slowly, listen more than speak, lead through depth rather than dominance. You are still a leader. Leadership is not a personality type. It's a practice. And the research backs this up: the traits most consist

You know you want something different. You're just not sure what. It's not a small thing to sit with - that restless sense of more without a clear direction for it. It can feel vague and frustrating and embarrassing to admit, especially if you're educated and experienced and are theoretically supposed to know yourself by now. But the truth is: knowing what you want is hard. Genuinely hard. Not because you're confused or uncommitted or too picky - but because most of us were n

Perfectionism is costing you more than you think. Not just time, though it's costing you that too. It's costing you momentum, and opportunities, and the experience of actually finishing things and feeling proud of them rather than only noticing what isn't quite right. For high-achievers, perfectionism often presents as a strength - look at the standards I hold myself to, look at the quality I produce. And there's something to that. High standards are not inherently a problem.

Redundancy has a way of rattling things that felt solid. Even when it's not personal - even when you know it's restructuring, or budget, or a strategy shift that has nothing to do with your performance - it lands personally. It asks questions you haven't had to answer in a long time. Who am I without this role? What do I actually want? Was I even building toward something that mattered to me? For high-achievers, redundancy carries a particular sting. Because so much of the id

You became known as the person who gets things done. The reliable one. The one who figures it out, who doesn't complain, who can be trusted with the hard stuff. And that's genuinely a gift. Until it isn't. Because being the capable one has a shadow side that almost nobody talks about. When you're reliably capable, people stop asking if you're okay. They assume you are. They give you more. They rely on you without checking the load. And somewhere in there, you stop asking for

It was logical. It followed from the degree, or the first job, or the promotion. Each step made sense in context. And now you're here, in a role that is completely reasonable and completely wrong, and you're not even sure how to explain that to anyone. Because it looks fine. You look fine. And "I'm good at it but it doesn't feel like mine" is not the kind of sentence that fits easily into a conversation. This is one of the most common things I hear from clients: a career that

Self-leadership is one of those phrases that gets thrown around a lot in the personal development space. And because it gets thrown around a lot, it often gets flattened into something it isn't. It's not about discipline. It's not about morning routines. It's not about being your own boss in the productivity-hack sense of the word. Self-leadership is the capacity to know yourself well enough to lead your own life with intention - rather than letting it be led by default, by h

LinkedIn will do it. A school reunion will do it. Sometimes a friend's offhand comment about their new job will do it. The comparison spiral. That particular downward pull where someone else's success becomes evidence of your inadequacy. Where you're not sad for yourself, exactly, but you're also suddenly very aware of everywhere you've fallen short of where you thought you'd be by now. For millennials - a generation that was told we could be anything, and then watched the ec

Here's something that took me a long time to understand: being good at something is not the same as being energised by it. We often build careers on our strengths without ever questioning whether those strengths light us up. And in the early years, this works fine. Competence is satisfying. Mastery feels good. Recognition fuels the engine. But over time, doing work that draws on your skills while depleting your soul becomes a very specific and very unglamorous trap. You're to

There's a particular kind of grief that comes with a career pivot that nobody really talks about. Even when the change is completely your own choice - even when it's the right choice, the brave choice, the one you've been building toward - there's often a mourning period. For the version of yourself who knew what they were doing. For the certainty you used to have. For the identity that fit, even if it was starting to feel too small. That grief is real and it deserves acknowl

Let's be honest: most of us are terrible at rest. Not sleep, necessarily - though many of us are bad at that too. I mean genuine, unproductive, purposeless rest. The kind where you're not recovering in order to perform better. The kind where you're just... resting. For high-achievers, this is uncomfortable in a way that's hard to explain to people who don't share the wiring. Rest can feel like falling behind. Like laziness. Like something that needs to be earned, or justified

You know exactly what I'm talking about. The meeting request you accepted even though your calendar was already over-full. The project you took on because nobody else seemed to want to. The colleague's deadline that somehow became your emergency. The "of course, happy to help" that came out of your mouth before your brain had time to catch up. For high-achievers, people-pleasing often masquerades as professionalism. We dress it up as being a team player, being reliable, going

Sometimes it looks like still showing up. Still delivering. Still saying yes. This is the version of burnout that high-achievers are most at risk for - and most likely to miss until it's gone much further than it should have. Because we're good at functioning under pressure. We've trained ourselves to push through. And we're surrounded by cultures that reward exactly that. So we don't notice the signs, or we notice them and override them. The persistent tiredness that coffee

"So, what do you do?" For most high-achievers, this question is practically a greeting. And we've learned to answer it fast, clean, and in a way that communicates status. I'm a Senior Manager at X. I lead the Y team. I'm in tech / finance / consulting. The problem isn't the answer. The problem is what happens when the answer stops being true - and we realise we don't know who we are without it. Career transitions are one of the most destabilising experiences for high-achievin

At some point in your late twenties or early thirties, ambition starts to feel different. It used to be clean. Motivating. You had goals and you chased them and the chase itself felt good. But then you hit some of those goals - and the feeling wasn't quite what you expected. Or you kept chasing and the goalpost kept moving and you started to wonder if it was ever going to be enough. That's what I call the ambition hangover. It's that specific flatness that follows years of ac

You followed the plan. Good grades, good university, good job. Maybe even a great job - one that looked impressive on LinkedIn and made your parents proud at dinner parties. And yet. There's this quiet background noise you can't quite name. A low hum of is this it? that follows you into Monday mornings and sometimes into Sunday evenings. You don't feel burnt out exactly. You're performing. You're delivering. You're fine. But fine isn't what you worked this hard for. Here's th