Leading Yourself

“You don't need everyone to understand your decisions. You need to understand why you're making them.”

This is the most personal episode of the series. I share the two years I spent in the middle with this book: writing, deleting, scrapping whole sections, and the quiet stretch where I thought I might not finish. I also share something I am not proud of, that I broke my own pattern and never announced it, because I was afraid I would fail.

And I talk about the moment it stopped being a question about the book and became a question about me. Maybe I am not a writer. Maybe I am not the person who writes a book.

Then we get practical. The two ways we all get the middle wrong: freeze and thrash, and the three-part anchor that actually gets you through when certainty is not coming: your values, your throughline, and your next honest step.

If you are in the foggy, unglamorous, nobody-claps-for-this middle right now , this one is for you. I am in one too.

In this episode:

• Why the middle is where transitions are actually won or lost
• Freeze and thrash: the two failure modes, and how to tell which one you are in
• Two years, one book, and the middle I went through over and over
• When a practical question quietly becomes an identity verdict
• The three-part anchor: values, throughline, next honest step
• Why clarity comes from the walking, not before it
• The Anchor Card, and two questions to sit with this week

Submit questions you would like me to answer live on the next episode here: https://forms.gle/7YdF8VMa3voUnjA69

Subscribe to the Monday Brew here: https://leadingyourself.myflodesk.com/mondaybrew

Check out my upcoming book here: ⁠https://buildyourcareersquad.com⁠

“When you can't win by being better, you can win by being different.”

Think about the last time you started something new at work. What did you do in those first few days?

If you are like most high performers, you got moving fast, head down, proving you belonged. And you ran right past the one moment that mattered: the quiet window at the very beginning, before anyone had decided who you are here, when you could have asked a different question. Not how do I prove myself. But who do I want to be here?

This is week two of Leading Through Transitions, about the loud, visible career changes (new jobs, promotions, pivots) and the ones nobody hands you: the scope you stretch into, the project you raise your hand for, the decision to show up differently.

I pick up right where last week left off, and get specific about what I did when I switched companies: I slowed down, blocked time each morning to map how the place actually worked before volunteering, and chose who I wanted to be as a leader before I got busy proving myself.

Then I bring back the Four Zones of Work as your compass, and explain why the transitions you choose yourself can be the sneakiest burnout traps of all.

If you are starting something new, thinking about raising your hand for something, or just deciding how you want to show up this season, this one is for you.

In this episode:

• Why every new job, team, role, or project is a window, and why it closes fast
• What running past the window actually costs you six months from now
• The question to ask before what do I want to accomplish here
• The concrete slow-start practice I used at a new company, and what it produced
• The Four Zones of Work, and why high performers burn out in the Excellence zone
• A three-step Four Zones audit you can run today

“Your relationship with yourself sets the standard for every relationship you allow into your life.”

Have you ever caught yourself describing who you are with a label that is not quite true anymore?

Not a job title , a label. The strong one. The reliable one. The one who always says yes. The words come out the way they always have, and somewhere in the middle a small part of you notices: that is not really me anymore.

That moment is what an identity shift feels like from the inside. And it is where we start this month's new series: Leading Through Transitions.

In this first episode, I open up about the go-to person I used to be, the one who needed to be in every room, involved in every decision, and the honest truth that the need came from two places at once: real drive, and real fear.

I share why, after I left and started over, I chose on purpose not to become that person again, and what was left once the fear got quiet. I am more grounded now than I have ever been, and the purpose that was always underneath just takes a different shape.

We talk about why we hold onto old labels, why the messy middle is where the real work happens, and how to move through a big change while staying anchored to what is actually true about you.

If something in your life is shifting right now, and you are not sure who you are on the other side of it, this one is for you.

In this episode:

• Why you never notice an identity shift while it is happening
• The two things we do to avoid the discomfort, holding on and grabbing ahead
• A personal story about the label I chose to set down
• How to tell the difference between drive and fear
• A simple three-part way to hold any transition
• Why the unsettled feeling is a marker, not a warning
• Two questions to sit with this week

Listen to my conversation with Anthony Trucks referenced in today's episode here: 83: Identity Shift with Anthony Trucks

"Your comfort zone is your most expensive habit."

I almost did not record this episode. Not because I did not have something to say, but because I was not sure it fit.

I just got back from six weeks traveling, three of which I spent in Spain. And somewhere between the long lunches that nobody was rushing, the evenings that wound down slowly, and the walks that were not workouts, something shifted. Not in a dramatic way. In the quiet, clarifying way that only happens when you step far enough outside your normal to actually see it.

Here is the thing about going back to where you are from after years away. You think you are going home. And you are. But you are also holding up a mirror to the life you built since you left. And some of what I saw in that mirror surprised me.

My routines, which I am genuinely proud of, which are one of my real strengths, looked different against that backdrop. Some of them were still serving me. And some of them I was doing out of habit, out of identity, because I am a disciplined person and this is what disciplined people do. Not because I had recently stopped to ask whether they were still the right fit for this season.

That question is what this episode is about.

In this episode:

• What three weeks of living at a Spanish pace did to my HRV, and what that data pointed to
• How I went hours without looking at my phone and did not even notice
• The difference between a disciplined relationship with food and a healthy one
• What I am actually changing: walking, meals, mornings, evenings, connection, and the honest reason behind each one
• The "tranquila" mindset and what a different relationship with urgency feels like in your body
• The question I came home asking myself and have not stopped asking since

This is the final episode of our July mid-year recalibration series. And it turned out to be the most personal one.

"Be more interested in becoming than proving."

You did the assessment. You saw what needs to change. And now the question sitting underneath everything is: how do I actually change it without blowing up everything that is working?

That is what this episode is about.

In Week 3 of the mid-year recalibration series, we are going to get practical. Not the inspiration version of change, the real version. The one that happens inside a full life, with real constraints, over actual time.

We will start by naming the cognitive trap that derails most recalibration before it begins: the instinct to conflate seeing something that needs to change with needing to start over entirely. Then I will walk you through the four specific failure points where recalibration breaks down, not because people lack motivation, but because the process itself has predictable places it goes wrong.

And we will close with a five-step framework for what sustained course-correction actually looks like: how to sort what you found, find the highest-leverage adjustment, define the smallest version of change that still matters, build the anchor before you move, and give it long enough to actually take hold.

This is the episode for anyone who has done the inner work and keeps stalling at the step where it becomes real.

In this episode:

• Why the brain jumps to starting over, and why that instinct usually costs more than it fixes
• The difference between a verdict and a signal and why it changes everything about how you respond
• Four failure points that derail recalibration even when the motivation is real
• How to tell whether you are dealing with an external problem or an internal pattern
• Why changing everything at once is not commitment, it is a setup for collapse
• What anchoring actually means and why it is the step most people skip
• The minimum viable change framework: small and sustained versus large and abandoned
• Why six weeks is the real timeline and six days tells you almost nothing