Fifteen years in the same role.
She had been in the same role for fifteen years. She worked hard, often too hard, and still couldn’t see how to get to the next level. When work got tough, everything else went with it: her training, her creative life, her relationships.
The problem wasn’t effort. It was where her energy went. Conflict and frustration would take over and drain the strength she needed for her goals. So we worked on containment: cutting out the relationships that cost her, building habits that held up under pressure, and pointing her energy in one direction.
A year in, she reaches insights on her own that she wouldn’t have believed if someone told her at the start. When a new role came out of nowhere, she was ready for it, and it paid about 30% more. Within three weeks, senior leaders had noticed her, and she’s being brought into projects she never would have been near before.
“I don’t have that ick feeling at work anymore. I look forward to it every day, and everything feels within reach.”
He had already won.
He had done everything there was to do. He was offered partner at a top consulting firm younger than almost anyone before him, helped scale one of the biggest companies in tech, then became top producer at a leading venture firm. He didn’t need more money. He just couldn’t stop.
He was working fourteen to sixteen hour days, with little left for his kids or his health. When we first met, his energy was frantic, running at a level he couldn’t turn off.
The first step was slowing him down. I helped regulate his nervous system and held space so he could step back and ask what he actually wanted. From there we worked through what mattered most: choosing his kids’ schools, changing how he guides them, and taking care of himself again.
Ten years later, he only does what he wants to do. He isn’t a slave to his phone or his inbox. He turns down projects, companies and people that don’t add something to his life beyond money. When he talks now, it’s about his kids, his interests, his life, and you can see it in his eyes.
The work continues. His ambition is wired to point at whatever pulls on him hardest, and for someone this successful, what pulls hardest is rarely what he cares about most. My job is helping him contain that drive and aim it where it matters.
“Michael saw me for who I am. He’s been a real friend, and he gave me a different energy toward life.”
