I Thought I Knew My Values I believed I knew my values. My calendar, my bank account and my decisions told a different story. Two years ago, my knee needed surgery, which meant at least six weeks off work, and I knew exactly how I'd spend them: worrying, not recovering. For the first time, I chose differently. I resigned, knowing other people would hold the pen on the story behind my decision. I left anyway. That decision wasn't easy to explain to myself, let alone to anyone

Two years ago I left a career that had run almost thirty years. There was no plan, no backup, no landing pad waiting on the other side. I left because I knew I couldn't do another year like the last one, and that was the entire strategy. What I didn't know was what I'd finally have time to notice once I stopped. Some of what I found, I knew was there. My father died weeks before I started a new role at a new firm. I should have been joining as Mrs Barnett. Instead, I was stil

Before the redundancy. Before the divorce. Before the betrayal. Before the illness. Before life knocked the wind out of you. You just don't feel like yourself anymore. Most people can name the moment, even if they would rather not. The thing that happened, or arrived without warning, after which you kept going, kept performing, kept everything intact, and told nobody. You kept going because that is what you do, and because stopping to examine it felt like a luxury, or a risk,

Some careers are controlled by one person's imagined reaction. A story about what they might do if you stepped forward. That story runs in the background of every decision about whether to apply, whether to speak, whether to challenge, whether to move. For many people that story is rooted in fear of retaliation at work, whether the risk is real or assumed. In most cases, it has never been tested. It shows up around promotions, visibility, and challenging senior stakeholders.

Gaslighting has become one of those terms that gets used loosely. In corporate settings, it is often thrown around to describe any disagreement or difficult manager. That is not helpful. Not every uncomfortable conversation is gaslighting. Understanding Gaslighting in the Workplace But when it is happening, the experience is distinctive. The conversation stops being about what happened and starts being about you. The term itself comes from a 1930s play in which a husband mani

For a long time, I told myself I was stuck because I didn't know what I wanted next. That explanation was convenient. It saved me from admitting something more uncomfortable. I knew what was not working. Managing people drained me in ways I had not anticipated. The workload was manageable, but the difficulty lay in the dynamics. There were political undercurrents in the team that I recognised and addressed directly. Resistance showed up in missed deadlines, incomplete work, a

What if what’s limiting you isn’t what’s happening in your life, but the explanation you keep returning to when you think about it? This is the midlife malaise narrative and it's harder to see than anything happening around you. Understanding Why You Feel Stuck in Midlife Everyone carries a narrative about how their life works. It’s the story you rely on to explain why things turned out the way they did and what you expect will happen next. You don’t sit down and revise it. I

Understanding the Challenges of Re-Entry If you're navigating midlife career re-entry following a break - whether by choice, redundancy, or a life change forced upon you - you may find it harder than you expected. Fewer roles are available. Some positions are not being renewed. AI is changing hiring decisions. Redundancies are increasing. Even with experience and a strong network, re-entry takes more effort and persistence than it once did. For many, age and past seniority no

Mid-life malaise is a strange thing. It doesn’t announce itself. You realise, almost by accident, that you’ve been running on muscle memory for far longer than you’d like. You’re working hard, busy, doing what you’ve always done, but the spark that made it feel worthwhile has slipped out of reach. Understanding Mid-Life Dissatisfaction That was my experience of it. Not a crisis, but a growing sense that the work I was pouring myself into no longer connected to anything that m

I dismissed Human Design as woo-woo when my coach mentioned it in 2019. Three years later, it gave me language for patterns in my life I had spent decades questioning. Charts, archetypes and energy types did not seem like something that belonged anywhere near the world I worked in. At the time my career sat firmly inside the corporate world of asset management. My title was Senior Vice President and my roles included Head of Consultant Relations EMEA and Director of Asset Man