The other day, I was speaking with a client who felt deeply triggered by a colleague’s response to their input.
You know those moments. That comment which touches something tender inside… and suddenly it feels much bigger than it should?
They’d gone from calm and capable to tight-chested and self-questioning in seconds.
As we explored it together, I noticed how quickly we can slip into surrendering our power without even realising it.
The mind creates a story: They shouldn’t have said that. They should treat me differently. Why is this happening to me?
And in that story, our power leaks away.
Later that afternoon, I found myself reflecting on how often this pattern shows up in our lives.
Especially if you’re someone who’s spent decades carrying responsibility, expectations, and the quiet weight of being the one others rely on.
It’s so easy to believe someone else’s behaviour is the reason we feel unsettled.
But what if it isn’t?
What if their response had nothing to do with us… and everything to do with how we relate to our own beliefs, insecurities, and unmet needs?
That’s where things start to shift.
When we decouple our wellbeing from someone else’s tone, mood, or reaction, something amazing happens.
We step out of reactivity. And we return to presence.
And from that presence, we can ask a different question.
Not ‘Why is this happening to me?’
But ‘What do I want to create from here?’
That’s the moment of agency.
I see this again and again in the men and women navigating the home straight of their careers.
There’s a kind of aliveness in that choice. A spark of possibility that wasn’t available before.
When we stop giving others authority over our internal state… we become the creators of our lives again.
And truly, that’s an extraordinary blessing.