Coaching Metta Blog

“I didn’t even realize that I wanted this promotion until someone else got it.” That came up when I was talking with Brittanni Hendricks on Midlife Remix, and she hears some version of it regularly from high performers. I keep coming back to it because it names what happens to the executives I coach, who have managed their own wanting for so long that, when it surfaces, someone else is already in the role.

Most of the leaders I coach describe themselves as driven, strategic, maybe a little intense. But underneath the drive, there's often a vigilance that never turns off, a background calculation running before every decision: what could go wrong here, what am I exposed to. It doesn't feel like fear, it feels like being thorough.

Most of the leaders I work with aren't stuck because they lack strategy. They're stuck because busyness has become the thing that keeps them from noticing what's actually driving their decisions — and it doesn't feel like avoidance. It feels ike responsibility.

The behaviors that got you here, the control, the drive, the need to be the one with the answers, didn't just become habits. They became how you understand your own value. So when something asks you to let go of them, it doesn't feel inefficient. It feels like a threat to who you are.

We spend our lives chasing success; climbing the corporate ladder, making more money, and proving ourselves. In midlife, we question what to do once we achieve it, or why we keep pursuing it when we haven’t.