"Everything is a priority right now."
Independent. Capable. Successful.
It's all reasonable. And that's why it's easy to brush off. None of it is news to you. The same conversation you have had with yourself in a quiet moment before, gone just as fast with the next accepted task.
You resolve other people's priorities for a living, and without prioritising your own it becomes even more to carry, which feels like a failing to simply put it down.
So you don't. And nothing changes.
"How's it all going?"
Busy. Good busy.
It is the most efficient sentence you own. It answers the question, it ends the conversation, and nobody ever hears the longer version.
The truth stays where you've always kept it.
Read that back and count the people you could say it to.
You put your desires into the future. When the launch is done. When the team settles. Then I’ll book it, take the weekend, call her back.
All the while training yourself to live in the future.
Arrival becomes impossible, because the moment you hit the target you are already onto the next one.
Already spent
From here
The problem is, nothing dramatic happens next. Five years on you are more experienced, more relied on, and better at it. Your list is longer, the recovery is shorter, and you are still saying it has been a busy few months.
You will come back to yourself at some point. Everyone does. The only question is whether it happens by choice or by collapse.
Collapse does not hand the choice back. This was never about being tired. It is about where the next five years go, and right now they are already booked.
The corporate world has a word for it. Insecure overachiever. They didn’t put it there. They recognised it, priced it, and hired it. Someone who keeps running, because the performance covers everything underneath it. They’re the most profitable people in the building.
Ninety nine percent has never been enough, so you go for a hundred and two. You keep exceeding it, so every year the number goes up. It’s by design. Why would anyone interrupt someone who keeps delivering?
Maybe you already left. Went out on your own, or you’re halfway there.
The target still moves. Only now there’s nobody left moving it but you.
“I was the most profitable person in that building. It took me another two years to work out that was the problem.”
ninety seconds for what is a priority right now
Rate how often each of the following fifteen statements has been true over the past six months, to unlock which priority would have the most immediate impact in your life right now.
1 of 15
I say yes even when at personal capacity.
Instant access to three scores for where you might be carrying more than you need to be. One small thing to try differently this week, and three questions worth reflecting on, specific to your result.
Free results emailed for your reference.
How often, these past six months
Before your result
What you require to operate at your potential. Met with consistency, care and respect.
What you accept, and what you are able to decline. Honoured, including by you.
What you feel, as an internal compass that highlights your needs and your boundaries.
These are not three skills to go and develop. They are three dimensions of self that were supposed to be met for you, consistently, by somebody else, a long time ago. Most of us got some of them. Whatever was missing, you found another way to fulfil, and in your case that way has worked extremely well.
All three hold each other up. We are only as equipped as the weakest one.
Your three
Each bar shows how far that pillar is from where it would support you best. A lower score means it's already well developed, and a higher score means it's had less practice and less attention, so you've been protecting it less.
No single answer out of the fifteen means much on its own, which is why this is hard to see from the inside. Put together, they show a pattern, and that pattern says a lot about what's been happening in your life.
These three pillars are what your self-esteem runs on. When they're underdeveloped, how you feel about yourself depends on how the quarter went. And it works the other way too, so when you develop all three on purpose, what happens in your life stops being down to chance and becomes something you design.
Your results are in your email too, so you can come back to these questions, or bring them to a conversation with me.
Reconnect runs on three dimensions. Vision, how you would like things to be. Values, who you need to become to live that vision. Velocity, how you move the pieces into place to make it happen. What you just scored sits inside values, and these are changes you can start making right away.
Needs, boundaries and emotions are what nearly every one of these conversations ends up being about, and many of us aren't giving them enough attention, on purpose.
When they're developed, you can handle the uncertainty, the mistakes and not having it all together, without any of it changing what you think you're worth. Worth you don't have to keep earning, because it's built on real self-esteem instead of how much you get done.
And it's something you can build on purpose.
Start with a conversation.
Reconnect works on the three dimensions that influence your outcomes. Your audit result sits inside the second one.
Everyone has all three. Two of them are inherited rather than uniquely theirs, by design. Flip the cards to discover the signs.Switch one off to see the signs.
All three dialled in
Your life, and nothing about you has been toned down. You know what you want, you hear yourself decline easily, and every no teaches people your values.
Everything in front of you is yours, a reflection of you, and you keep choosing you, for you. Success, presence and peace, felt in ordinary moments.
and now me.
Business development for an ASX200 tech company. I hit the target and it cost me my soul. The next year it went up another ten percent, so I had to do all of it again, plus more.
I resigned, and lost my sense of identity with it, because I had lost myself in the pursuit. Then I built a water sports apparel business so I could chase the wind and work from the beach. Different story, same result.
I am not going to tell you I understand what it is like to be a woman in your industry. But I was in the machine you are in, and I did not just get out of it. I got me back. How you do that is worth the conversation.
I was trying to figure it out by myself, but I couldn’t see where the actual problem was coming from. Now I’ve found ways to overcome the procrastination and emotional drain.
I knew what I wanted in my mind, but I found it hard to articulate. There were barriers stopping me and I couldn’t break through them alone. Now I have confidence, clarity and flow, and my business is moving forward.
Daniel didn’t focus on my problems. We shifted to what I wanted more of, and the problems stopped existing. Now everything comes from curiosity instead of fear.
Not ready for personal coaching?
The Reconnected Woman
Start the work in a group, once a week, for the price of a lunch.
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