Can you think of the last time you did something that terrified and excited you at the same time? If you’re like me, you can probably also think of a few times an opportunity like that revealed itself — and you let it pass by. We tell ourselves we’re not ready. We succumb to…

  There’s a particular trap that almost exclusively catches high achievers. It doesn’t catch the mediocre or the disengaged — they’re nowhere near it. It catches the capable, the accomplished, the ones who have built real expertise and a track record of results. It goes like this: you get good at something. Genuinely good. People…

My family spent two days at Disneyland. I spent most of it somewhere else entirely. Not physically — I was there. I stood in the lines, rode the rides, ate the overpriced food. But mentally, I was somewhere between a client situation I hadn’t fully resolved and a project that was nagging at me. I…

I once arrived at a client meeting with coffee in my lap. I was running late, reached for my coffee while pulling out of the driveway, misjudged the lid, and poured a generous amount of very hot coffee directly onto myself. I didn’t have time to go back inside and change. I arrived flustered, damp,…

  Something I’ve noticed about the way most leaders navigate change: they try to power through it. They treat uncertainty like an obstacle to overcome — something to be solved, managed, or outwaited. And the harder they push, the more exhausted and disoriented they become. Not because the change is too hard. But because they’re…

  A third of your time on this planet is spent at work. Let that land for a moment. Not a third of your workday. A third of your life. Which means if your work feels like a grind – if you’re pushing through it, white-knuckling your way from one obligation to the next, surviving…

  I want to tell you about something I discovered one morning while doing yoga in my cold house. I’d been putting off my practice for days — weeks, if I’m honest. Every morning I’d wake up with good intentions, feel the temperature in the room, and decide that I’d start tomorrow. The conditions weren’t…

  There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with how many hours you’ve worked. It’s the exhaustion of going through the motions. Of making it through your day – back-to-back meetings, decisions, emails, conversations – and arriving at the end of it feeling like you somehow weren’t really there for any…

  Many executives understand the importance of being more strategic. Far fewer know how to actually practice it in the middle of real work. Because strategy isn’t just a way of thinking. It’s a way of operating. And if you don’t intentionally change how you operate, you’ll default right back into the pull of the…

    One of the major challenges executives struggle to overcome is sacrificing the strategic for the operational. If you are falling into this trap, understanding and working through your resistance is the first step to freedom. Operational is clean. It has defined edges and finite solutions. You can check the boxes and feel a…