Responsible for 25 years. But postponing your aliveness.
Most senior leaders I speak with are extraordinary at doing what needs to be done. They’re sorted on the deliverables, the obligations, the expectations of others.
They know how to execute. They show up. They hold the line when they need.
But what is often absent in all that is attention to what actually lights them up.
Not what should light them up. And not what used to. But what does, right now, if they're honest enough to look.
I sat with a client recently who had been running hard for two decades. Successful by every measure. And when I asked him what he genuinely wanted to spend more time on, he went quiet for a long moment.
"I haven't thought about that in years; and I don’t actually know,” he said.
That's not unusual. It's an epidemic among people at his level.
I've come to understand that when you consistently override what is alive within you in favour of what is required of you, something inside dims.
It’s slowly and quiet. Sometimes I see that what starts as a form of self-discipline can eventually start to look like depression.
But when you turn attention back toward what genuinely stirs you, something shifts.
In my experience, horizons begin to expand. Energy that has been locked in things that feel like an obligation starts to move again.
Something new becomes possible.
So, the question isn't whether you've been responsible. No doubt, you have.
The question is what you've been postponing in order to be.
And what is still alive in you that you haven't given space to yet?
Photo by Leo_Visions on Unsplash