Why did they leave?

When someone finally decides to quit their job, it’s often the last step in a long process. Usually, the reasons for leaving have been building up for months. The resignation is just the end of a story that started a long time ago, when the person began to feel like they didn’t matter, like nobody was listening to them, or like they just didn’t fit in at work. This can happen when you spend most of your time at a place and start to feel disconnected from it.

Talking to , founder of Organised Minds, I realized her work isn’t really about reducing turnover or improving workplace culture. Those are outcomes. What she’s actually trying to understand is something much more fundamental: what happens when organizations forget that the people who work for them are, first and foremost, human beings.

She’s always been interested in why people do what they do. Growing up in Romania and later moving to the UK, she found herself wondering about human behavior. Her time working in customer service only made her more curious. Every time she talked to someone, she noticed little things about how they communicated, their body language, and what motivated them. These observations eventually led her to study organizational psychology, which gave her the tools and words to explore the questions she’d been asking herself for years. It was like she finally had a way to understand what she’d been seeing and experiencing. This fascination with human behavior started long before she began her own consultancy, and it’s what drives her work today.

One question, in particular, has stayed with her.

What makes people genuinely happy at work?

It seems really easy, but a lot of what we do at work is actually about something else. Companies put a lot of effort into making people more productive, happy, and less likely to quit. But they often forget about the things that make people want to stay at their jobs in the first place. You know, it’s like they’re trying to fix the symptoms, but not the real problem. When people feel good about their work, they’re more likely to stick around. So, shouldn’t we be focusing on what makes them happy and fulfilled, rather than just trying to make them work harder or stay longer? It’s not just about getting more done, it’s about creating a workplace where people actually want to be.

Piroska believes people are ultimately searching for three things at work: autonomy, belonging, and the opportunity to grow. Salary matters, but it rarely explains the whole story. She has seen people remain loyal to organizations that pay less because they feel respected, trusted, and included. She’s also seen people walk away from well-paid positions because those deeper needs were never met.

When you think about it, our jobs are about so much more than just doing work. It’s not just about trading time for a paycheck. We spend a huge part of our lives working with other people, making friends, dealing with conflicts, trying to find meaning in what we do, and wondering if we’re really making a difference. It’s kind of weird that we expect all these really human things to happen without ever stopping to think about what’s going on in our minds. We’re talking about feelings and emotions and relationships - all the things that make us human. So, it makes sense that we should try to understand the psychology behind it all, because that’s what’s really driving our experiences at work.

That psychology becomes especially visible when people begin to leave. Leaders are often surprised by resignations, but Piroska rarely is. In her experience, the warning signs are almost always there. Employees stop sharing ideas. Their enthusiasm fades. They become quieter in meetings. They disengage long before they resign. Yet the higher someone sits within an organization, the easier it becomes to miss those signals.

How many resignations are described as unexpected simply because no one was really paying attention? I definitely witnessed in my corporate life many of these.

During our talk, one thing kept coming up: feeling safe to express ourselves.

People often talk about this idea in discussions about leadership, but Piroska views it as something more fundamental - a basic need that everyone has. We usually think that people quit their jobs because they’re looking for better pay or new opportunities, but she thinks that’s not always the case. Many people leave because they don’t feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas anymore. When employees start to feel like their opinions don’t matter, or that no one is listening to their concerns, they begin to pull back, even before they’ve officially left the company. This can happen slowly, and it’s not just about the money or the chance to work somewhere else - it’s about feeling safe and valued at work.

She believes that feedback can be really helpful for people to grow and learn, but it can also hurt relationships if not done carefully. The thing is, it’s not usually the feedback itself that’s the problem, but rather the relationship between the people involved. A lot of people haven’t learned how to take criticism in a positive way, and many leaders don’t know how to give feedback without being too harsh. We often think that feedback is just about sharing information, but it’s also about how people feel. When we give feedback, we need to consider the emotions of the other person, not just the facts. This is important because feedback can be a powerful tool for growth, but it can also damage trust if not handled with care. By being more aware of the emotional side of feedback, we can learn to give and receive it in a way that builds relationships rather than hurting them.

That comment took our conversation in a completely different direction than I had anticipated.

Being in corporate life, I’ve seen and heard people been told to leave their feelings at home when they go to work. Not in those specific words, of course. Being professional has often meant not showing emotions, like we have to stop being human to be an employee. But Piroska wonders if that’s ever really worked. Life doesn’t just stop because we’re at work. Sadness, sickness, money worries, family problems, and uncertainty - they all come with us to the office, no matter what. Whether we’re in a meeting or just walking in the door, our personal lives are always with us. We can’t just turn off our feelings like a switch. It’s not that simple. Life is messy and it follows us everywhere, even to work. So, maybe it’s time to rethink what it means to be professional. Maybe being human and being an employee aren’t mutually exclusive. Maybe we can find a way to bring our whole selves to work, emotions and all.

Instead of wondering if emotions have a place at work, we should be asking if our workplaces give people the room to deal with tough times in a respectful way. When someone is going through a hard time, like losing a loved one, having health problems, or just feeling overwhelmed, the question shouldn’t be whether their feelings are okay. What really matters is whether our work environment lets people ask for help without being judged. We need to make sure that people can be honest about how they’re feeling, without fear of what others might think. This way, we can create a space where people can navigate difficult moments with dignity, and get the support they need to keep going.

She doesn’t think they should try to fix people’s feelings. Instead, leaders their job is to make a safe space where people can deal with their emotions and still do their work. Being able to understand and talk to people, being flexible, and having honest conversations are important skills. They might seem simple, but they can make a big difference in how people feel, especially when they’re going through tough times. These skills can make people feel supported or alone, and that’s a big deal. Leaders should focus on creating a good environment, not just trying to fix everything. This way, people can feel safe and keep working, even when things are hard.

Her research into women’s experiences at work reinforced the same idea from another angle. Through conversations with women living with conditions such as endometriosis and PCOS, she discovered that many felt compelled to hide aspects of their physical and emotional reality because workplace cultures still treated those experiences as uncomfortable or inappropriate. There are plenty of organizations that ask people to bring their whole selves to work while quietly rewarding those who reveal the least about being human. Bring your whole selve to work but only if it’s polished, please.

As we kept talking, I realized that Piroska didn’t often discuss organizational psychology in a theoretical way. To her, psychology is just a way to understand people better and more truthfully. She thinks that leaders should be able to notice when someone’s behavior changes, pay attention to their body language, and see when someone who’s usually involved becomes quiet. These things aren’t just ways to get more work done, they’re about really paying attention to others. By doing so, leaders can build stronger relationships with their team members and create a more positive work environment. It’s not about using certain techniques to boost productivity, but about genuinely caring for the people you work with. When you take the time to notice and understand the people around you, you can create a more supportive and inclusive space. This approach can lead to a more harmonious and successful team, where everyone feels valued and heard.

Talking to different companies and people, I’ve often heard that people think that making the workplace better requires a lot of money, new technology, or big plans to change the culture. It seems like something that is far away and expensive, or needs a lot of effort. But Piroska, just like me, thinks that some of the most important changes don’t have to cost a lot. Sometimes it’s just about listening more carefully to what people have to say. Or giving feedback in a kind and compassionate way. It’s about recognizing the effort people put in before pointing out what they did wrong. And creating a space where people feel safe to speak their minds honestly. These ideas aren’t new or revolutionary, but surprisingly, they’re not very common either. The good news is, you don’t need a big budget to make these changes happen ;).

As we were wrapping up, I asked her what message she wants people to get from her work. She said she hopes leaders understand that making work better doesn’t always mean spending more money or offering fancy perks. Most of the time, it’s about getting to know the people who are already working with you, and understanding what makes them tick.

We spend a huge part of our lives working, but when we talk about our workplaces, it’s like they’re not a part of our real lives. Like it’s a seperate world. The truth is, they totally are. Workplaces are where we experience all sorts of things - we meet someone special, we lose our nerve, we deal with sadness, we heal, we learn and grow, we question ourselves, and we figure out what we’re really about. And all of this happens quietly, shaping us into the people we become, one day at a time.

What really hurts companies is not when employees leave in large numbers or when they are not invested in their work. It’s forgetting that no matter what role someone holds, they never stop being human.

I write personal reflections, observations, and stories about the human side of life and work. I explore themes such as growth, identity, ambition, change, relationships, and meaning, often connecting them to what we experience in the workplace.

Life of Others is an invitation to look more closely at ourselves and the people around us, and to find insight in the experiences we share.

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When she graduated from university, marketing seemed like the obvious choice. She enjoyed creativity, liked understanding people and had built an education around the field. When her first role ended in a layoff, she assumed she had simply been unlucky. The next company would be different. She completed a master’s degree, found another marketing position and later moved into a different industry, expecting each change of environment to solve the feeling that something wasn’t quite working.

It never did. The work became increasingly difficult to engage with. Deadlines slipped, motivation disappeared and the confidence she had always associated with herself began to erode. She had always considered herself disciplined and ambitious. Now she wondered whether those qualities had ever really been there. “I’ve always been a high achiever,” she told me. “That wasn’t who I was.”

It is striking how quickly we question ourselves before we question our environment. Most people don’t respond to work that feels wrong by asking whether they are in the wrong career. They assume they need to work harder, become more resilient or simply wait until things improve. We tend to treat dissatisfaction as evidence that we haven’t adapted yet rather than evidence that we may be adapting to the wrong thing.

Ashley did what many people do. She searched for another version of the same career. A different company. A different mission. A different manager. The jobs changed, but the feeling remained.

Living in New York, she started attending startup events despite having no background in technology. She became curious about the people building companies rather than the products themselves and began reaching out to strangers on LinkedIn to ask about their work. Those conversations gradually opened a door into operations, where she found herself coordinating engineers, designers and product teams despite having little technical experience.

The work was objectively harder than anything she had done before. There was more responsibility, more complexity and a steeper learning curve. Yet it felt lighter. She wasn’t forcing herself to care anymore. Organising people, solving operational problems and helping teams work well together came naturally. Instead of spending energy trying to become interested, she spent it improving something she already cared about.

The promotions followed quickly. Within five years she moved from programme manager to vice president, leading larger organisations and increasingly complex teams. Looking back, she rarely speaks about those years in terms of achievement. What she remembers is the feeling of alignment. The work demanded a great deal from her, but it demanded the parts of her that she most enjoyed using.

That feeling slowly changed.

The leadership remained meaningful, but more of her days became consumed by work that left her feeling detached. She assumed this was simply the price of seniority. Leadership becomes harder. Responsibility increases. Perhaps this was what everyone eventually experienced. She stayed because the explanation sounded reasonable.

Then her manager told her the department, including her own job, would be eliminated.

The layoffs were still two months away and the team knew nothing about them. Ashley couldn’t tell anyone what was coming, but continuing as though nothing had happened felt impossible. The conversations she had with her team began to shift. They spent time talking about projects people had forgotten they were proud of. She helped colleagues describe work they had always underestimated and reviewed résumés that quietly started appearing in one-to-one meetings. Team members who thought they had little to offer began recognising patterns in their own careers that had never seemed significant before.

By the time the layoffs were announced, several people had already accepted new roles.

Ashley doesn’t describe those weeks as the moment she discovered coaching. At the time, she thought she was simply trying to support her team through an uncertain period. Only afterwards did she realise that the work she found most meaningful had very little to do with operations and almost everything to do with helping people make sense of themselves.

Leaving corporate life, however, did not immediately make that clear.

Her first instinct was to build an operations consultancy. It matched her experience, her title and the career she had spent years constructing. Coaching felt much harder to claim. “I thought people would think I was just unemployed,” she admitted. The sentence is funny because it is so recognisable. Careers often change long before our identities do. We can begin doing different work while still introducing ourselves through the title we have already left behind.

The shift happened because other people kept asking for something she hadn’t planned to offer. Former colleagues weren’t looking for operational advice. They wanted help leading teams, navigating uncertainty and making decisions they didn’t feel ready to make. The requests continued until it became difficult to ignore what people consistently saw in her, even if she hadn’t yet learned to describe it herself.

I asked Ashley how she now distinguishes between work that is simply difficult and work that isn’t a fit. She answered without mentioning stress, workload or long hours.

“When the work is a fit,” she said, “the friction belongs to the work. The problems are difficult, but they don’t make you question yourself. When the work isn’t a fit, the friction starts to feel like you.”

It is a subtle distinction, but one that explains why so many capable people lose confidence in careers that were never suited to them in the first place. Difficult work stretches us. Misaligned work slowly convinces us that we need to become someone else. From the outside, those experiences can look remarkably similar. Both involve hard work, uncertainty and persistence. The difference is where the struggle lives. One asks you to solve problems. The other asks you to keep solving yourself.

Interested in the whole piece? Take a look at our recording!

I write personal reflections, observations, and stories about the human side of life and work. I explore themes such as growth, identity, ambition, change, relationships, and meaning, often connecting them to what we experience in the workplace.

Life of Others is an invitation to look more closely at ourselves and the people around us, and to find insight in the experiences we share.

Subscribe now

I’ve been noticing something lately that’s got me thinking. I’ve been to these 4-day festivals where the music’s going non-stop, and I’ve seen people who are on burnout leave, just letting loose and having the time of their lives. They’re the same people who are planning these huge, three-day weddings, and they’re always the life of the party at other big events. It’s like they’re partying even harder than I am, and it’s weird because they’re the ones who haven’t been working for a while now, supposedly because they’re burned out.

I was really confused by this. The people who claim they can’t even sit at a computer for two hours are the same ones who can party all night. It made me wonder if I had the wrong idea about what burnout actually means. Maybe I just don’t get it. It seems weird that someone could be so exhausted they can’t work, but then they can dance for hours without getting tired. I’m still trying to figure it out.

I’m aware that burnout can manifest in various ways - some people struggle to get out of bed, while others seem to have plenty of energy for certain activities. I’ve had friends tell me they have more energy than I do, but when I ask them about it, they explain that it’s a different kind of energy. They say that physically, they can dance all night, but mentally, they’re exhausted, especially when it comes to work. This got me thinking - if someone has the energy to go out and have fun, does that mean they should be able to work too? Or is it the type of work, or the situation they’re in, that’s really draining them? Maybe it’s not just about having energy or not, but about what’s sucking the energy out of them in the first place.

It’s really confusing when people think about the difference between being physically and mentally tired. For example, someone might be able to run a long distance or go to a lot of social events, but just the thought of doing some work on their computer can be overwhelming. It’s like their body is still going, but their mind just stops working when they feel like their surroundings are not comfortable or are asking too much of them. This mix of feelings makes it hard to understand and explain burnout, and it’s easy to get it wrong. Sometimes, people might look fine on the outside, but on the inside, they’re struggling to cope with their emotions and the demands of their daily life.

In the Netherlands, they have a really good system in place to help people who are sick, including those with burnout. If you’re unable to work, your employer still has to pay you for up to two years, and they usually pay at least 70 percent of your salary. At the same time, they’re supposed to be helping you get back on your feet. There are coaches and occupational health doctors who work with you, and the government also has programs to support you. Compared to a lot of other countries, this is a really generous system - it’s like having a safety net to fall back on.

I was talking to a friend from India the other day, and she told me something that really caught my attention. Apparently, in India, burnout isn’t even considered a valid reason to take time off work. If someone close to you passes away, you might get three days off, but if you’re dealing with depression, you’re lucky if you get a day. Then, it’s back to work as usual. I’ve heard from my other friend in the states that it’s not much better in the US. They have limited paid sick leave, and people often view burnout as a personal failing rather than a legitimate health concern. And let’s not forget about the medical bills - they can be overwhelming, and people feel pressured to keep working even when they should be taking it easy.

But then I started thinking about other parts of the world, like Southern Europe, where they seem to have a totally different approach to rest and recovery. They have longer lunch breaks, a strong support system from family and friends, and a culture that actually values taking it easy. It’s interesting to see how different societies handle burnout, and how that affects whether or not people feel comfortable acknowledging it. Some places, like India and the US, tend to sweep it under the rug, while others, like Southern Europe, seem to prioritize self-care and relaxation. It’s food for thought, anyway. The way we treat rest and recovery can have a big impact on our overall well-being, and it’s worth considering how we can do better.

Neither extreme feels right to me. Ignoring mental health is cruel, but treating every dip in energy as burnout also risks making the concept meaningless. Somewhere in between lies the balance we should be aiming for, in my humble opinion..

At the same time, it raises a question. Where is the line between caring for yourself and leaning too heavily on the system? Burnout is real, and so is exhaustion. But so is the need for responsibility, both to yourself and to others.

What if we changed the way we think about workplaces? Instead of always blaming the person, what if we looked at the structure of the workplace itself? Maybe if we had shorter work weeks, jobs that were more flexible, and ways for people to come back to work gradually, we could prevent people from being out of work for a long time. Not everyone needs to take a whole year off, some people might just need a safer place to work, fewer hours, or a boss who can see the signs of trouble early on and do something about it. This way, people could get the help they need and still keep their jobs. It’s all about finding a better way to support people, rather than just expecting them to deal with things on their own. By making a few changes, we could make workplaces more supportive and help people succeed.

I’m not sure what to make of it. At our 4-day festival, I was the one who needed to sneak away and take naps, while the people who were burned out were still dancing, even though they had only gotten three hours of sleep. This makes me wonder, is it because of the drugs, or is it because of their energy levels? Or maybe it’s just that burnout is a more complicated issue than I can understand from where I’m standing. Maybe there’s more to it than what I can see on the surface. It’s possible that people who are burned out have found ways to cope that I’m not aware of, or maybe they’re just better at pushing through their exhaustion. Whatever the reason, it’s clear that burnout is a complex issue that can’t be simplified or easily explained.

Where do you think the line is, between taking care of yourself and not abusing the system? And what should workplaces and societies do differently to make that line clearer?

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When the organization offered her another role, Ying noticed that her usual excitement was gone. Earlier in her career, every new opportunity had represented growth, proof that she was progressing, and another chance to show what she could do. This time, the title would be different, but the work felt familiar. She would be solving the same problems, having the same debates, and moving through another version of a life she already understood. Saying no did not feel like a dramatic act of reinvention. It felt more like the first honest response to something she had been sensing for a long time.

We tend to think that big changes in our lives start with one major event, like quitting a job, getting sick, breaking up with someone, or losing someone we love. But for Ying, it wasn’t that simple. She did lose her job unexpectedly, which sped up her career change, but the truth is, she had already started to feel like something was missing. She wasn’t unhappy with her career, exactly - it’s just that it had stopped challenging her and making her feel alive. The life she had built for herself had become too comfortable, too routine, and it wasn’t pushing her to grow and become the person she wanted to be.

The layoff gave her something she had rarely possessed during her years as an executive: time. Instead of immediately moving into another senior position, she began journaling. The notebook had been a gift from her eldest daughter, who had created the cover herself. Ying originally imagined that her writing might become a business book, a place to preserve the lessons she had learned about leadership, transformation, strategy, and scaling companies. She had spent decades collecting knowledge and believed she was finally ready to share.

As she sat down to write, a lot of questions started popping up in her mind. At first, she was thinking about what job she should do next, but then she began to wonder who she was outside of her old role. Instead of trying to figure out how to use her experience to get another big job, she started thinking about what kind of life she really wanted to have. The project slowly shifted from being about teaching others how to build a career, to being about understanding who she had become while building her own career. She was on a journey of self-discovery, trying to figure out what made her tick and what she wanted to achieve in life. The more she wrote, the more she realized that it wasn’t just about finding a new job, but about creating a life that truly reflected who she was.

Writing her memoir, Success Was Never What I Thought, was a turning point for her - it helped her come to terms with her past and get a clearer picture of what she wanted for her future. At first, she thought she was just writing down what she knew from her professional life, but it ended up being a journey of self-discovery. As she wrote, she realized that the questions she had been trying to avoid weren’t just about her job, but about who she was, how she wanted to spend her time, what her purpose was, and what she hoped to achieve in the second half of her life. It was a chance for her to reflect on what truly mattered to her and what she wanted to get out of life.

Ying is careful not to reject ambition or dismiss the life she built. She speaks about her corporate career with gratitude, not resentment. The organization gave her opportunities to learn from talented people across countries and functions, to lead meaningful work, and to create financial security for herself and her family. Her success also gave her daughters greater freedom to choose lives that reflected their own interests. Her eldest daughter is pursuing a professional career in dance, a path Ying admits she might once have struggled to see as practical. Today, she understands supporting that dream as one of the most meaningful expressions of what her own career made possible.

She realized that success wasn’t a fake thing, but she had thought of it as the final goal, when in fact it was just a means to get her where she wanted to be. Doing well and achieving her goals had helped her become more capable, given her more options, and made her family more secure. But it couldn’t tell her what to do with those options. Success could help her build a career, but it couldn’t answer the question of who she wanted to be when her career was no longer the main part of her life. It’s like, having a great job and being good at it is one thing, but it’s not the same as knowing what truly makes you happy and fulfilled. She had to figure out who she was outside of her career and what she wanted to do with her life when she wasn’t defined by her job.

That distinction matters because conversations about fulfillment often reduce ambition to a problem. We are encouraged either to climb or to step away, as though achievement and meaning belong to opposing lives. Ying does not see them that way. She believes both can exist within the same journey, but they should not drift so far apart that we become successful in a life that no longer feels connected to us.

For much of her life, success was measured through external checkpoints. She had grown up understanding that a good life meant listening to parents and teachers, studying hard, attending a respected university, and progressing through a stable career. As a first-generation immigrant in Canada, professional achievement carried additional meaning. It represented security, belonging, and evidence that she had earned her place in a country that had welcomed her. There was nothing inherently wrong with those measures, but they left little room for another question: whether the life she was building remained aligned with the person she was becoming.

Measuring alignment can be tough because it’s not something you typically find on a resume. But what does it really mean? For some people, it’s about having the freedom to do what they want, when they want. Like being able to have a conversation with someone at 8 in the morning, instead of getting ready for another big meeting. Or being excited to write when an idea strikes, noticing the beautiful blue sky outside, or spending a summer day with loved ones without feeling like you’re missing out on something else. These little moments might seem insignificant compared to running a huge business, but for Ying, they’re a different kind of success. It’s about finding joy in the simple things and feeling like you’re living the life you want.

Listening to her, I thought about how often we postpone this kind of reflection until life creates the space for us. We are willing to reflect on presentations, projects, and performance, but much less likely to reflect on the life containing them. We ask what we have learned professionally and what we should improve next, yet rarely pause to ask whether the direction itself still makes sense. Busyness can make external progress feel like internal clarity, even when the two have quietly separated.

Sometimes we get a feeling that something is off before things actually start to go wrong. For Ying, a warning sign was when she didn’t feel excited about a new job opportunity that came up. For others, it might be the dread they feel on Sunday nights, or the feeling that they’re always having to achieve something new, or the sense that their life looks perfect to others but feels empty inside. These feelings don’t necessarily mean it’s time to make a change, but they do mean it’s time to pay attention and listen to what’s going on inside. It’s like our inner voice is trying to tell us something, and we need to take a moment to hear what it’s saying.

She wishes she had celebrated herself more during the years when she was constantly moving forward. Whenever she achieved something, she allowed herself only a few seconds of satisfaction before deciding she needed to do more to deserve it. This pattern will be familiar to many high achievers, particularly women and first-generation immigrants who may feel that belonging must be continuously earned. Recognition becomes less a reason to feel proud than a new standard that must be defended.

When Ying wrote her memoir, she was able to tell herself something that she had found hard to believe while she was building her career - she had actually done a great job. It’s a simple sentence, but for someone who always thought about what’s next, it was a big deal. It meant she could look at what she had achieved and be proud of it, rather than feeling like she had to keep trying to prove herself. This was a new way of thinking for her, and it allowed her to appreciate her success instead of always striving for more. By doing this, Ying was able to shift her focus and see that she didn’t have to constantly be working towards the next goal to be successful. She could just enjoy what she had already accomplished.

Now, her work at the Quiet Millionaire Studio shows a change in her approach. She spends her time writing, giving advice to companies, and helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses. She also talks to high achievers who are thinking about what they want to do next in their lives. Even though she’s not in the corporate world anymore, she still uses the skills she learned back then. But her goal is no longer to give people a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, she wants to help them find their own way by giving them the space to figure things out for themselves.

The conversations differ depending on where they begin. On LinkedIn, people often approach her with practical career questions about promotions, job searches, and professional growth. On Substack, the questions are more personal. People ask what led her to write her memoir, how she found meaning after corporate life, and how they might understand the restlessness appearing in their own lives. What surprised Ying was how widely these reflections resonated. She had expected to speak primarily to senior professionals approaching a second chapter, but younger people, parents, writers, and people with very different careers also recognized themselves in the questions.

Perhaps this is because the desire for reinvention is not limited to a particular age. It often begins whenever the identity that carried us through one part of life becomes too narrow for the next. We may still value what we built and feel grateful for what it gave us, while also recognizing that gratitude does not require permanent loyalty to an earlier version of ourselves.

Ying does not believe the human desire for more ever fully disappears. She has simply changed what more means to her. During her corporate years, scale was measured through revenue, responsibility, and organizational impact. Now it might mean one reader sharing her writing with a child, one conversation helping someone question an inherited definition of success, or one person realizing that it is not too late to begin again. The desire to grow remains, but it is no longer separated from the reason growth matters.

For her, being a leader is not just about having a title, it’s about what you do with it. Wanting to be the boss of a big company can be a great goal, but it’s not just about the title. What really matters is what you do with the power and influence you get from it. It’s more meaningful when you use your success to help others, not just yourself. When you can make a difference in people’s lives, that’s when it really counts. It’s about using your position to make things better for everyone, not just to get ahead yourself.

As I finished talking to Ying, I realized just how important hope is to her. At 54, she’s starting fresh after a long and successful career, and she’s doing it with the energy of someone who doesn’t think they’re too old to begin. She’s not throwing away her past, she’s using it as a foundation for her next chapter. The experience, financial security, discipline, and perspective she gained over 25 years are now giving her the freedom to write, build a community, help others, and choose how she spends her time. It’s like she’s taken all the best parts of her old life and turned them into the building blocks of her new one. Ying’s story shows that it’s never too late to start something new, and that with the right mindset, we can turn our experiences into a launching pad for our next adventure. She’s living proof that hope and determination can help us create a fulfilling life, no matter what our age.

Losing a job can be really tough, it feels like a big part of you is gone. But sometimes, it can be a chance to start fresh and find out who you are outside of your job. It’s like, when you’re doing something for a long time, you can get stuck in a routine and not even realize it. And then, when that routine is broken, you have the chance to see what else is out there for you. It’s not that the painful things that happen in life are good, but they don’t have to define you either. You can take the time to figure out what they mean to you, and how you can use them to move forward. It’s okay to not have all the answers right away, and it’s okay to take your time to heal and discover what’s next. The important thing is to remember that you are more than your job, and that you have the power to create a new path for yourself.

Ying’s story didn’t just resonate and stayed with me because she left corporate life. It was how she didn’t use that experience to trash everything she did before. She doesn’t see her life as a before-and-after story, where the past was bad and the present is good. Instead, she thinks of it like different seasons, each with its own reason for being. Her early years taught her how to get things done, be a leader, build things, and take care of herself and others. Now, she’s learning how to slow down, think about what she’s doing, and use what she’s learned to make a real difference.

Achieving success can be really great. It can give us a sense of security, make us feel more confident, and provide us with valuable experience. We also get the freedom to make choices that we might not have been able to make before. But at some point, we realize that getting a new title or achieving something else can’t define who we are as people. And it can’t tell us how to spend the rest of our time. Those are questions that we have to answer for ourselves, in a quieter, more personal way. We can’t just ask our employer, family, or society to tell us what to do. We have to look inside and figure it out for ourselves.

Ying used to think that her job was to give people the answers she had learned over the years. But now she sees things differently. She wants to help people figure out what questions they should be asking. A lot of people are too busy, scared, or successful to think about what they really want. By helping them ask the right questions, Ying is reminding them that they don’t have to make big changes to have a meaningful life. Sometimes, all it takes is taking a step back, being quiet, and listening to what’s really going on. It’s about noticing that the life you’ve built is asking you to think about who you want to be next. This can be a powerful way to discover what’s truly important to you and to find a sense of purpose. By creating space for reflection and self-discovery, Ying is helping people to tap into their own potential and to create a more fulfilling life. It’s not always about making drastic changes, but about being still and listening to your own inner voice.

I write personal reflections, observations, and stories about the human side of life and work. I explore themes such as growth, identity, ambition, change, relationships, and meaning, often connecting them to what we experience in the workplace.

Life of Others is an invitation to look more closely at ourselves and the people around us, and to find insight in the experiences we share.

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sees things differently.

When we spoke, she kept returning to the same point: most people already have far more to work with than they realize. Years of experience, lessons learned, mistakes made, and problems solved. Yet the moment they start thinking about building a personal brand, they behave as if they’re starting with a blank page.

“People usually don’t talk about the interesting things they’ve done,” she said to me.

Soon it became clear to me that this wasn’t really a conversation about branding. It was about how easily people lose sight of the value they’ve already created.

We often take years to develop our skills, guide teams, and learn from our mistakes. But when it comes to writing a simple post on LinkedIn, we suddenly think we have nothing worth sharing. Instead of focusing on what makes us unique - our own experiences - we try to find the perfect topic or image to present ourselves, forgetting that nobody else has been through what we’ve been through.

Mimi didn’t always know she was going to be an entrepreneur, it just kind of happened that way. She didn’t have a plan to start her own business, it’s just something that ended up happening.

Actually, the way she became a business owner was pretty unexpected.

After building what she considered a successful career, she unexpectedly lost her job. Entrepreneurship wasn’t part of some carefully designed master plan. It was simply what came after the certainty disappeared. Getting fired forced her to think differently. Not because she had a grand vision for a future company, but because she suddenly had no paycheck and a lot of time to reflect.

Her first business didn’t do well either.

Now that she looks back on it, she doesn’t think that time in her life was a mistake. Actually, it taught her a lot about being secure. She learned that she never wants to rely on just one job, one paycheck, or one source of money for her future. Instead of chasing certainty, she wanted to build something more resilient. Something that could absorb setbacks without collapsing.

Her way of thinking now influences a lot of the guidance she offers to other people.
A lot of people come to her convinced they have a content problem. They think they need a better strategy, more consistency, or a clearer niche. According to Mimi, that’s rarely the real issue. Usually, the problem is hidden beneath the surface. There’s a missing link between the things people create and the person who made them.

She believes, though, that people are actually very connected to their true selves. In fact, most individuals have a clear understanding of who they are, and it’s not that they’re disconnected from their identities, but rather, they’re already aware of their own strengths, weaknesses, and personalities. The difficult part is allowing other people to see that version before it feels polished and complete.
It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one.

Most of the times when I read about reinvention, it is about changing who you are. But Mimi’s story shows us that it’s not always like that. Sometimes it’s not about becoming someone new, but about being brave enough to let people see the person you already are. It’s about giving yourself permission to be yourself, after spending years figuring out who that is.

Her own experience with content creation reflects that.
Long before she built a business online, she was comfortable speaking in front of groups. She trained teams, worked in sales, and regularly stood in rooms where people expected her to know what she was talking about.

She then took a seat in front of the camera. And froze.

Now she tells that story a lot, and it’s because she wants to change the way people think about being confident. Confidence isn’t something you’re born with, she says. It’s repetition.

The people who seem natural on camera aren’t necessarily more charismatic or more gifted. They’ve simply done it enough times for it to stop feeling uncomfortable.

Isn’t that reassuring? We tend to assume confident people possess something we don’t. In reality, they may have just accumulated more reps. We can do that, too.

As we kept talking, I started to wonder about the person who was actually running the show. Was there any difference between Mimi online and Mimi at home?

Her answer came without hesitation.
She said the person you see on social media is the same one you’d meet in person. The only difference is, at home, she’s probably wearing something comfy and one of her kids is likely calling out for her in the background.

In a world where authenticity often feels carefully curated, that answer stood out and it gave me a smile on my face.

Authenticity may have less to do with sharing everything and more to do with consistency. Different setting, same person.

Building her own business also changed the way she thinks about success.
There was a time when being successful meant always getting bigger and better: having more people follow you, making more money, and keeping the momentum going.

Experience gave her a more complicated picture.

These days, she measures success less by numbers and more by freedom. Freedom to spend more of her time doing work she enjoys and less of her time doing work she doesn’t.

As we were wrapping up our talk, I turned to her and asked what she hoped others would learn from her experience. Her answer felt connected to everything we’d discussed.

Failure, she said, was never proof that she should stop.

Every failed business felt devastating while she was living through it. Looking back, though, those experiences weren’t verdicts. They were information. Each one pointed her in a different direction and taught her something she couldn’t have learned otherwise.

As I mentioned a few alineas before, people regularly talk about reinvention as if it requires leaving the past behind. But perhaps the opposite is true. Maybe reinvention works best when we trust our past more, not less. Every job, every mistake, every failed venture, every skill we’ve developed along the way becomes part of the foundation we build from.

As me and one my best friend’s often discuss: some things just fall away to make room for something new, most of the times even better than what you hoped for in that certain moment. In line with Mimi, it’s not failure, it’s just information.

Mimi’s message is likely to strike a chord with a lot of people, and that’s probably because it’s something that many can relate to. At first glance, it seems like she assists people in creating their own personal image. What she’s really getting at is that they shouldn’t feel like they need to come up with someone special to get people’s attention. More often than not, that person has been there all along.

I write personal reflections, observations, and stories about the human side of life and work. I explore themes such as growth, identity, ambition, change, relationships, and meaning, often connecting them to what we experience in the workplace.

Life of Others is an invitation to look more closely at ourselves and the people around us, and to find insight in the experiences we share.

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On paper, her work is straightforward. As a fractional COO, she helps founders build the systems that allow growing companies to scale. She brings clarity to ownership, documentation, decision making, and cross functional communication so businesses can continue growing without every question flowing back through the founder. As she puts it, she helps turn founder knowledge into company capability.

The more I was learning from Katie, however, the clearer it became that systems are rarely the hardest part of her work. The harder part is helping founders let go of the role that made the company successful in the first place.

Founders rarely set out to build organizations where every important decision depends on them. In the early days, that dependence is often what allows the business to survive. They answer every customer question, solve every problem, approve every decision, and carry an extraordinary amount of context because there is simply no one else to do it.

“Duct tape works for a surprisingly long time,” Katie told me.

She’s right. Early on, scrappiness is an advantage. There is little value in designing elegant processes for work you’ve only done a handful of times. The challenge is that growth rarely announces itself with a clear transition point. There is no meeting where everyone agrees that yesterday’s workaround has officially become tomorrow’s operational debt.

Instead, founders quietly compensate. They answer another Slack message, jump into another customer issue, clarify another decision, and promise themselves they’ll build proper systems once things settle down. From the outside, the company still appears to be functioning. Inside, everyone gradually learns that the fastest way to solve almost any problem is to ask the founder. As Katie put it, “the founder has accidentally become the company’s operating system.”

I kept returning to that sentence after our conversation because it captures something I suspect extends far beyond entrepreneurship. We often imagine that growth is about adding people, systems, or capital. Katie made me wonder whether growth is just as much about subtraction. At some point, the founder has to stop being the answer to every question. The company doesn’t stall because it lacks talent. It stalls because everything still depends on one person.

What fascinated me most was that Katie never described this as an operational problem alone. Again and again, she redirected the conversation toward the founder behind the process.

“The founder has to accept that what got the company here won’t necessarily get it through the next stage.”

At first, it sounds like advice about delegation. Listening more carefully, I realized she was describing something much deeper. Letting go of control isn’t simply a management skill. It’s an identity shift. The habits that once made someone indispensable can quietly become the habits that keep everyone else dependent.

That became even clearer when I asked what she’d learned about the relationship between the way people run businesses and the way they run their own lives.

“The patterns usually follow them.”

Someone who avoids difficult conversations outside work often avoids them inside it. Someone who keeps everything in their own head may struggle to delegate. Someone who believes being needed is the same thing as being valuable may unintentionally build a company where no one feels able to make decisions without them.

I found myself lingering on that last thought.

Being needed and being valuable aren’t the same thing, yet they’re remarkably easy to confuse. Many founders become indispensable because that’s exactly what the earliest stage of the business required. Over time, however, the role that once created the company begins to limit it. Delegation isn’t difficult simply because it requires trust. It’s difficult because it asks people to rewrite the story they’ve been telling themselves about why they matter.

Perhaps that’s why Katie doesn’t believe operations can be separated from humanity.

A process may look perfect on paper and still fail if it ignores how people actually think, behave, and relate to one another. Companies often describe themselves through strategy, structure, and execution, but underneath every workflow are people carrying their own assumptions about trust, conflict, responsibility, and control. Businesses don’t erase those patterns. They amplify them.

That perspective also explains why her answer surprised me when I asked what founders are really struggling with once you look beyond documentation, project management tools, and organizational charts.

“Fear,” she said.

Not fear of failure in the abstract, but fear that the company only works because they never stop working. Fear that if they step back, something important will fall apart. Fear that customers, employees, or investors will discover they don’t actually have everything under control.

Listening to Katie, I began to wonder how many operational challenges are really emotional ones disguised as business problems. We often talk about scaling as though it’s a question of better systems, but for many founders the real work begins much earlier. It begins with trusting that the company can become bigger than what one person is able to carry.

That shift has changed Katie’s own definition of success.

She told me she has become much less impressed by growth for growth’s sake. Ambition can build extraordinary companies, but it can also convince people that every sacrifice is temporary, that the next milestone will finally create space to breathe, and that just a little more growth will eventually make everything easier.

Today, success looks different to her. It includes building a company that still allows you to remain a person inside it. One that can function without your constant intervention, and one where you’re proud not only of what the business achieves, but of how people experience working there.

Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Katie what building businesses had ultimately taught her about being human.

“We like to make companies sound rational. We talk about strategy, performance, growth, and execution. But underneath all of that are people who want to feel useful, safe, respected, and understood.”

That felt really close to home.

Katie helps founders build better systems, but the systems themselves are rarely the destination. They’re the visible expression of something much deeper: a founder’s relationship with trust, identity, and the willingness to let other people carry the weight alongside them.

When we talk about scaling, we usually talk about systems, hiring, and execution. Katie reminded me that those are only the visible parts. Beneath them sits a quieter question that every founder eventually has to answer.

Can you build something that no longer needs you to prove your value every day?

Perhaps that’s what scaling really is. Not building a company that depends on an extraordinary founder, but becoming the kind of leader willing to let it become extraordinary without them.

I write personal reflections, observations, and stories about the human side of life and work. I explore themes such as growth, identity, ambition, change, relationships, and meaning, often connecting them to what we experience in the workplace.

Life of Others is an invitation to look more closely at ourselves and the people around us, and to find insight in the experiences we share.

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Lina did not set out to redesign her life. It happened quietly.

For years, she lived in two worlds. By day, she was the reliable one, the person people counted on. For eight years at a growing startup, she moved from creative marketing into operations and eventually touched almost every part of the business. At night, a different part of her came alive.

Between ten o’clock and two in the morning, after the workday had ended, she designed planners, read about psychology, explored organizational design, and filled notebooks with ideas about how people build meaningful lives. These were not projects she talked about much. They simply felt necessary.

Looking back, she sees both versions as real. The problem was not that one was authentic and the other was not. It was that they had become separated.

“I was curious, experimental, always running some random side project,” she tells me. “At work I was the organized one, the person who was expected to have all the answers. Performing different versions of myself became exhausting.”

We build one life around what is expected, and another around what feels alive. After a while, the split begins to feel ordinary.

That realization became the beginning of a much bigger question. Not how to build a better career. But how to build a better life.

Like many people, Lina assumed work would eventually provide everything she was looking for. Meaning. Fulfilment. Purpose. A sense that she was contributing something worthwhile. Instead, she found herself searching for those things after work had finished.

She began designing her own planner, not because she wanted to become more productive, but because she could not find a system that reflected the complexity of her own life.

“It started as a planner,” she says, “but eventually became an exercise in self knowledge and life design.”

Months of reflection changed the way she thought about work and, eventually, about life itself. She became less interested in individual performance and more interested in the systems surrounding it.

After years inside a rapidly growing startup, she watched capable people struggle, not because they lacked talent, but because the company had been built reactively rather than intentionally.

“Founders solve whatever feels urgent,” she says. “They hire when they’re overwhelmed and build systems as reactions rather than decisions.”

“We build our lives almost the same way we build companies. You just need to see the connections.”

To Lina, life design and organizational design are not separate disciplines. They are the same idea viewed from different distances. One begins with an individual. The other begins with a company. Both ask the same question. What are we trying to build?

When we talk about organizations, Lina rarely begins with processes. She begins with people.

Many companies, she believes, do not struggle because they lack talented employees. They struggle because they were never consciously designed.

A company spends weeks finding someone who fits the culture, then offers a couple of onboarding meetings and expects them to absorb years of unwritten knowledge. New employees spend their first months decoding invisible rules instead of doing the work they were hired to do.

“They spend more time trying to figure out how things work than actually doing the work,” she says.

That idea extends beyond the workplace. Many people separate systems from culture, as though one belongs to operations and the other belongs to leadership.

Lina sees them as inseparable.

“When people are treated like resources to optimise rather than human beings doing meaningful work, they notice.”

Over time, people begin responding to the company in exactly the same way the company responds to them. They disengage, stop bringing ideas, and do the minimum required, not because they no longer care about the work, but because they no longer believe the work cares about them.

She believes leaders can avoid much of this by asking themselves one deceptively simple question. If I truly respected this person, how would I act right now?

How would I onboard them?

How would I explain difficult feedback?

How would I respond when something goes wrong?

“The companies that get this right feel different,” she says. “People care because they belong somewhere worth belonging to.”

One exercise she returns to repeatedly is the Five Whys, a way of moving the conversation beyond the individual and toward the system that made the mistake possible.

After spending years helping companies become more intentional, I found myself wondering what had made Lina apply that same question to her own life.

When I ask what changed, she doesn’t mention a promotion or a project. She talks about meditation.

For years she practised on and off. In her late twenties, she committed to ten or fifteen quiet minutes every morning before work. The intention was simple. Create a little calm before the day began.

Something unexpected happened instead.

Those quiet mornings started showing her a life she had not been paying attention to. Not a life filled with bigger titles or greater achievements. A quieter one. Meaningful work. Time in nature. Strong relationships. Enough freedom to spend her days in ways that felt like her own.

“For a long time,” she says, “I thought I needed to become someone worth being proud of before I could have those things.”

Eventually the gap between those quiet mornings and the rest of her day became impossible to ignore.

“I stopped wanting to impress people.”

Instead of chasing achievement itself, she began chasing something much harder to measure: peace.

“A good day now is one that feels exactly how I wanted it to feel.”

Her definition of success became surprisingly ordinary. Meaningful work. Enough money to live comfortably. Time. Freedom. People she loves.

Toward the end of our conversation, I ask what the founders and teams she has worked with have taught her about her own life.

Her answer comes almost immediately.

“That we can just do things.”

Growing up, building your own business felt distant, almost reserved for other people. Meeting founders quietly dismantled that belief. What surprised her wasn’t how extraordinary they were. It was how ordinary they seemed.

Someone had an idea they couldn’t let go of. Someone wanted more freedom. Someone simply started.

Watching them changed something. Not because she suddenly wanted to build a company herself, but because she stopped seeing meaningful work as something reserved for other people.

The most important thing she ever redesigned was her own life.

I write personal reflections, observations, and stories about the human side of life and work. I explore themes such as growth, identity, ambition, change, relationships, and meaning, often connecting them to what we experience in the workplace.

Life of Others is an invitation to look more closely at ourselves and the people around us, and to find insight in the experiences we share.

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Instead, she found herself collecting stories.

“I thought I’d be another voice sharing research,” she told me. “Then I realized the evidence is already there. What was missing were the human experiences behind it.”

We know a great deal about healthy workplaces. We have decades of research on trust, engagement, psychological safety, meaningful work, and wellbeing. Most executive teams would struggle to disagree with those ideas. Yet many employees still leave work feeling unheard.

Stories reveal something frameworks often cannot. They show how organizational decisions are actually experienced by the people expected to live inside them.

As Cat talked about the people she had interviewed for her Substack, Human Doings, Human Beings, it became clear that she rarely explained workplace problems through individual behaviour. A disengaged employee, an overwhelmed manager, or a struggling team were never, in her mind, the right place to begin.

Instead, she kept returning to a different question.

What made that outcome likely?

Many leaders assume communication begins after a decision has been made. Strategy comes first. Communication explains what has already been decided.

Cat has gradually come to believe the opposite. Communication begins before the decision is made, or at least it should. Listening is not simply a way of explaining change more effectively. It shapes the quality of the decisions themselves.

“The employee voice,” she explained, “needs to be in the room before decisions are made.”

Employee voice is not feedback collected after implementation. It is information about how the organization actually works. It reveals where processes create friction, where trust quietly erodes, where incentives create unintended behaviour, and where the culture leaders imagine differs from the one employees experience every day.

Listening becomes much more than a leadership skill. It becomes part of the organization’s design.

Cat shared an example from her own experience. During the pandemic, her organization discovered employees had accumulated large amounts of unused vacation time. Financially, those unused days had become a growing liability, and one obvious solution was to reduce future vacation allowances.

On paper, the proposal made sense.

Instead of asking how to reduce the liability, leaders asked why people weren’t taking time off.

The answer wasn’t that employees valued work more than rest. Many simply didn’t feel comfortable stepping away. Rather than reducing benefits, senior leaders encouraged people to take leave, modelled the behaviour themselves, and communicated clearly that taking time off would not be held against them.

The liability gradually disappeared.

More importantly, the organization changed the message employees were receiving.

Organizations often solve structural problems with structural solutions. Sometimes the real problem is relational.

Cat saw the same pattern in many of the conversations she was having. People rarely stopped caring overnight. They adapted. Managers became too busy to notice them, ideas received less attention than they once had, recognition became increasingly transactional, and eventually people stopped offering the parts of themselves that no longer seemed welcome.

Again and again, people described putting work into a box so they could protect the rest of themselves. Some found purpose through writing. Others through art, community, volunteering, or side projects. Work was rarely expected to become everything, but people still wanted it to acknowledge something essential about who they were.

Cat is careful not to romanticize that idea. She does not believe healthy workplaces require people to bring every part of themselves to work, and she sees strong boundaries as healthy. What matters is simpler than that. People want to feel respected. They want their perspective considered before decisions are made, they want someone to notice the particular strengths they bring, and above all they want to feel like participants in the system rather than subjects of it.

“The need to be seen doesn’t disappear. It just moves.”

I kept thinking about that afterwards. Organizations spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to communicate decisions more effectively, but Cat’s work points to an earlier question.

Are we listening before the decision is made?

Because the organization people experience is shaped long before the announcement is written.

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is one of those people.

A writer, former English teacher, school librarian, and college essay consultant, she has spent much of her life helping people find language for experiences that are difficult to explain. Some of those people are students trying to understand who they are and how they want to present themselves to the world. Sometimes the person doing the searching is Kristie herself.

Her current work spans two memoir projects. Illegible: The Body as Misread Narrator explores chronic illness, long COVID, menopause, brain fog, and what it means to live in a body that no longer behaves in ways you recognise. Saudade: A Geography of Longing moves through adoption, ancestry, family, belonging, and the complicated relationship between place and identity.

Underneath both projects sits a recurring question: what happens when the story you’ve relied on to understand yourself no longer fits?

One phrase appears throughout Kristie’s writing: what it costs to be misread, and what it takes to finally be seen. It sits quietly underneath almost everything she explores. And it’s what got me so curious in the first place.

Being misread, as she describes it, is not simply a matter of being misunderstood. It can alter the way a person experiences themselves. After enough years of translating yourself for other people, you begin editing your own perceptions before anyone else has the chance. You become easier to understand, more acceptable, less inconvenient. You learn how to tell the version of yourself that causes the least friction.

Eventually another question appears: who benefits from my being so easy to read?

For Kristie, being seen has very little to do with admiration. Admiration creates distance. Being seen requires something more intimate. It requires another person to recognise complexity without insisting that it first become tidy, inspiring, or easy to explain. It means being understood without having to simplify yourself.

That idea runs through much of her work. It also shapes the way she looks at other people. Once you begin noticing how much work goes into appearing coherent, certainty becomes harder to hold on to. Curiosity starts to take its place.

The idea of looking beneath the obvious also runs through the way she understands stories. Again and again, her attention moves beyond the visible event and towards what sits underneath it.

Part of that instinct comes from years spent teaching. Students tell one story with their words, another with their behaviour, and often a completely different one through their silences. Part of it comes from adoption, which sharpened her awareness of absence and ambiguity. Chronic illness strengthened it further. When doctors tell you everything is normal while your body insists otherwise, the gap between official explanations and lived experience becomes difficult to ignore.

People are rarely hiding the truth when they tell the simpler version of their story. More often, they are telling the version they have been able to understand.

Someone gets sick. Someone moves. Someone leaves. Someone stays.

Those things happen, but they are rarely the whole story.

The more revealing questions tend to arrive later. What changed? What became impossible to ignore? What did the experience uncover? What became clear years afterwards that could not be seen at the time?

That way of looking at life shapes the way she works with students as well. Many arrive believing they need to present an impressive story. Parents often think the same. Yet what interests her is rarely the achievement itself. It is the meaning sitting underneath it.

One pattern she returns to often is the way people tell socially acceptable versions of themselves. Achievement, growth, resilience, gratitude, lessons learned. Students do it because they think universities want resilience. Adults do it because many of us have learned to make pain productive.

Beneath those stories another process is usually taking place. People are trying to reconcile the person who lived through an experience with the person who now has to explain it. They reach for achievements when what they really want is recognition. They focus on facts because they do not yet trust the meaning.

The details that reveal us are often smaller than we expect. The object someone kept. The room they avoided. The sentence they never managed to say. The things that seem ordinary frequently tell us more about a person than the things they deliberately place on display.

This becomes especially visible in her work with students. A student might insist they have no story to tell while describing how they taught themselves three programming languages, spent years observing birds, cared for younger siblings, or quietly became the person everyone turns to when something breaks. What feels ordinary to them often turns out to be where identity is hiding.

The best essays, she argues, are not miniature autobiographies. They are places where a person’s mind becomes visible.

Another theme that appears throughout her work is the difference between success and being seen.

Success is often the result of being legible to other people. It is measured through awards, credentials, accomplishments, promotions, and forms of recognition that are easy to count. Kristie writes openly about appreciating external validation. Winning the Amy MacRae Award for Memoir for her essay Molasses Brain mattered deeply because it arrived during a period shaped by long COVID, cognitive loss, and uncertainty about whether writing would continue to be possible.

Recognition mattered.

Yet being seen remained something different.

Being seen happens when something complicated, fragmented, awkward, difficult, or deeply personal is met with recognition rather than correction. Sometimes the most meaningful response is not praise. Sometimes it is simply the feeling that another person understands a place you have struggled to describe.

The most personal parts of her writing emerge when she reflects on illness and the ways it changed her understanding of herself.

For a long time competence sat at the centre of her identity. She was the smart one, the teacher, the fixer, the person who could organise chaos into language. Usefulness felt important. Endurance felt admirable. Pushing through difficulties seemed like proof of strength.

Then her body began telling a different story.

Years of endometriosis, migraines, IBS, menopause, long COVID, and brain fog gradually made the old narrative impossible to sustain. At first, she understood this as failure. Something had stopped working.

Looking back, she increasingly wonders whether her body had been speaking for years and whether she had simply become very good at ignoring it.

The story shifted from I am failing to keep up to I built a life around ignoring the cost of keeping up.

That shift changed everything.

When the story is failure, shame tends to follow. When the story changes, different possibilities appear. Attention. Rest. Listening. Boundaries. A different relationship with yourself.

What makes these reflections compelling is that they never arrive as conclusions. There is no sense that the questions have been solved. There is humour in the way she writes about being a recovering over-functioner capable of turning rest into a project complete with goals and sub-tasks. There is self-awareness without performance. Reflection without certainty.

That quality also appears in the way she approaches memoir.

She does not seem interested in memoir as a record of events. For her, memoir is a way of investigating meaning. What happened matters, but not because facts create meaning on their own. The event is the evidence. The writing begins when the questions start.

Why does one memory still carry emotional weight while another disappears? Why does a particular moment remain vivid for decades? Why does the body remember things the mind has organised into a more acceptable story?

Meaning changes. Experiences reveal different layers over time. What once looked like resilience may later reveal a lack of support. What once appeared to be personal weakness may reveal something much larger. One of the reasons she values essays is their ability to hold revision. They allow someone to say: I used to believe this. I now understand it differently.

That willingness to reconsider seems central to everything she writes.

It also seems to be one of the things other people have taught her.

Behind every application, essay draft, achievement, fear, ambition, and disappointment sits a private logic that becomes visible only when we pay attention. The people who move through her work reinforce the idea that identity is never finished. Life keeps asking us to revisit what we think we know about ourselves.

What appears to comfort her most is the possibility of return. Not necessarily a return to an earlier version of yourself, but a return to questions you stopped asking. To interests that slipped away. To parts of yourself buried beneath responsibility, achievement, illness, expectation, or simply the passing of time.

People change. Lives change. Stories change.

The explanation that felt unquestionably true ten years ago may no longer fit. A version of ourselves that once seemed lost may quietly make its way back.

One sentence stayed with me after reading Kristie’s work:

People are often telling the version of a story they have been allowed to know.

There is something generous in that observation. It leaves room for the possibility that our understanding of ourselves remains incomplete. That the explanation which made sense five years ago may not be the one that makes sense today. That a life can be reinterpreted without being rewritten.

Most lives are more complicated than the stories told about them. They contain contradictions, revisions, false starts, missing chapters, and discoveries that arrive much later than expected.

Kristie’s writing keeps returning to that reality. Not to provide answers, but to stay with the questions a little longer.

It makes my life feel less like a problem to solve and more like an essay still unfolding.

Thank you, Kristie, for sharing your story with me!

I had just come from work: ten to twenty minutes late, in the clothes I wore to work.
The first thing she said?

“Oh, are you coming from work? Are these your work clothes?”

I said yes. And ignored the second part.

Then she added, “I don’t work. It’s a waste of time.”

Somewhere between trying to smile and trying to breathe, I started wondering if she had any other hobbies. She was in her thirties, a multi-millionaire due to someone’s passing. She never had to work, and she made it clear she never would.

She talked for ten minutes about how strange it was she hadn’t met me yet. There had been so many parties, events. Throughout the week especially.

I said, “I was working.”

I’ve never been ashamed of that. I work because I have to, but also because I want to. If I had all the money in the world, I’d still work. Maybe differently. Maybe less.
But I would still want to contribute to something, get things moving, add value.

She didn’t agree. And she let me know I was doing life wrong.
I didn’t have my priorities straight. She was there, with her boyfriend all the time, and I was not. What a pity for my partner!

Then came the moment I regret and remember all at once.

I turned to her boyfriend and asked, “How do you feel about having a girlfriend with no ambition?”

It wasn’t kind. It came from a place of frustration.
But he paused. And said, “I wish she had something to do. She waits all day for me to come home.”

He’s a lawyer. He works a lot.

She didn’t stay silent either. She turned to my boyfriend and asked, “What’s it like to have a girlfriend who misses all the important events with friends… because she’s working?”

And she ordered the most expensive things from the menu.

I tried to find a topic. I asked about her dog (that she dresses up.. not really my cup of tea, but everyone has it’s preferences) that she showed me all the pictures of.
I asked about the bracelets she was wearing and she told me she made them herself.
The store where she’s buying her materials asked her if she wanted to come work there, or otherwise sell. But the answer was a hard no. Why would she?

I tried.

But I couldn’t anymore.
There was no match. No subject we had in common.
The dinner felt like a waste of time.
So I left.

Fast forward to now, 8 years later.

We’re still in each other’s lives. Who would have thought?

And I appreciate her now.

Because I’ve seen the human behind the judgments. I’ve seen the weight of having no purpose (that doesn’t come only from work, but it can help). The mental struggle of living a life that looks so different from the people around you.

And I’ve also learned: you can be sincerely busy without having a job.

Groceries. Walking the dog. Cooking. Therapy. Reading. Waiting for someone to come home so the day can feel shared.

I judged her for not working.
She judged me for working.

We both missed the point.

She thought work was a waste of time.
I thought not working was a waste of a life.

But neither of us really saw the other.

She saw me as someone who was always missing out: on parties, on time, on presence.
I saw her as someone floating through life without purpose or drive.

What we both missed was that meaning looks different depending on where you stand.

I thought (back then) drive and success was the measure of a good life.
She thought freedom was.

I wore my schedule like a badge of honor.
She wore her freedom like armor.

We were both defending something.
Both feeling misunderstood.
Both quietly unsure whether our way was enough.

Maybe the point was never about work or no work.
Maybe it was about how easily we assign value without understanding someone’s context.

Maybe it was about how easy it is to judge what we don’t relate to.
And how hard it is to hold space for a version of life that doesn’t look like our own.

We both missed the point.
But we stayed long enough to find it anyway.
Not in agreement. Not in conversion.
Just in a quiet kind of mutual recognition.

And that, in the end, was enough.

When I came across ’s writing, I was struck by how often her reflections on children were actually reflections on adulthood. Her observations weren’t just about the children in her classroom. They were about all of us.

As a primary school teacher, Claudia spends her days observing children learn, connect, struggle, forgive, and grow. Over time, those observations have become lessons about human nature itself.

In this conversation, she reflects on what children have taught her about belonging, humility, identity, forgiveness, and what it means to remain teachable throughout life.

Before we begin, could you tell us a bit about yourself and your Substack? What inspired you to start writing about the lessons you’ve learned from working with children?

Hi! I’m Claudia. I’m a primary school teacher. I also dabble in a few other things like writing, stationery design, tutoring, and creating educational resources.

My Substack is basically just a collection of my very many thoughts! There are poems in there, fiction, life lessons, and personal essays. But what inspired me to join Substack were the lessons I’ve learned from working with children. I have always appreciated anthropology, and working so closely with children has definitely opened my eyes to things that I could stand to learn from them as an adult.

You spend your days observing children learn, connect, struggle, and grow. What have they taught you about human nature?

So many things! One prominent lesson is how easily they let things go. Generally speaking, children do not bear grudges. They have their feelings and then they are over it; they forgive, let go, and move on. This is such a stark contrast to how most adults can be, unable to let things go and determined to deal out to others what we think they deserve.

Another lesson is how willing they are to learn new things. They have such adaptable mindsets and always seem to have room for more information, even if it is contrary to, or expands upon, an existing belief. Many adults are set in their ways, established in their beliefs, and unwilling to entertain anything new.

I feel like these changes happen naturally as we age and grow in experience. However, I can’t help but see the treasure in these traits that children naturally possess. We should never want to stop learning because none of us will ever reach the point where we know everything. The ability to let go of certain situations and move on does wonders for our own peace and contentment in life.

What is something children understand intuitively that many adults seem to lose along the way?

They understand that things overall aren’t that serious and they certainly seem happier for it!

In one of my articles, I gave the example of children going from intense falling outs to exchanged birthday invitations all in the same week. They just seem to get that things happen, emotions can be had, and then we resume!

Maybe that’s a bit too simplistic for some adult situations, but aspiring to a version of this would certainly give me more peace, that’s for sure.

Is there a particular child or moment in your classroom that changed how you see life?

Yes! I gave this example in an article:

“During my teacher training, I remember observing a Year 5 lesson on enlightenment in Buddhism. Sat on a small chair at the back of the classroom, I heard a student say something that would eventually give me a lot to think about:

‘I’m changing religion! I wanna be a Buddhist and reach enlightenment!’

Now there’s obviously a lot to question here about the child’s genuine understanding of what he had said. It is more likely that this child was enthralled by the concept of inner peace or attaining this abstract, mystical state in which one is wiser, freer, and more compassionate.

But what struck me was how quickly he was willing to make a change, embark on a U turn, and change gears because of something he had just learned.”

We often think of children as the ones learning from adults. In what ways have the children you’ve taught become your teachers?

I am naturally quite observant, so I’ve always noticed particular behavioural patterns in children which often contrast those seen in most adults.

I also really enjoy the book Those Who Are Proud by Dag Heward Mills, which has a whole chapter on the natural qualities of children. After reading this, I definitely began to identify some of the qualities mentioned in the book in the children I teach, and would naturally compare this to adult presentation.

What have children taught you about belonging and the human need to be seen, accepted, and understood?

We have an internal desire to belong and to be accepted, which can definitely be seen in children. From their love for attention and desire to be “chosen” to even just answer a question, to their hurt response when they feel left out, this is evident.

Even with very young children, there are many fires to put out regarding friendship issues, usually where one person feels excluded.

Many adults struggle with self doubt and the fear of getting things wrong. What have children taught you about courage, failure, and trying again?

I have seen children struggle with the same things. I do think it’s at least partly linked to temperament. However, with children there does seem to be more of a willingness to learn. If they don’t understand something the first time, they are usually willing to listen to another explanation. They tend to ask for help rather than giving up straight away.

We actively teach them that they are here to learn and that mistakes are a part of that process, to combat the fear of making mistakes. We also offer a lot of praise and encouragement.

Maybe the unwritten rule that adults are supposed to have it all figured out, combined with the growing inclination towards idealism and performance, contributes to the self doubt and fear. But we are still all just figuring it out and that’s okay.

What qualities do children possess that you wish more adults protected in themselves?

If I had to sum it up in one word, I would say: humility.

I think this quality, contrasting the pride of adults, is where many of the other positive qualities I’ve observed stem from, such as the ability to forgive more easily and their willingness to learn new things.

Through your work, what have you learned about identity and how people become who they are?

Children already have distinctive personalities from a young age. It’s so lovely to witness and really does enrich a classroom. They are very open, so it’s usually quite clear to see how various people and circumstances influence who they are, what they learn from family members, extracurricular activities they may be involved in, how religious their family may be, and so on.

What is a misconception adults have about children that you’d like to challenge?

Maybe seeing children as less than, or not quite fully a person yet?

Children are truly great human beings. We can stand to learn so much from them.

Looking at the world through children’s eyes every day, what gives you hope?

• It’s possible to do hard things.

• That thing that may feel deep in the moment really isn’t that deep in the grand scheme of things.

• Give yourself permission to be present and really have fun in the ordinary things.

What have children taught you about relationships, friendship, and conflict?

Children can have big emotions just like adults. They get hurt, fall out with friends, and have misunderstandings.

I’ve found that it can be really difficult for children to handle those big emotions in the moment. But after each party has had a chance to explain, the teacher mediates, apologies are exchanged, and the friendship is typically restored and everyone goes away happy.

It paints a picture of a simpler means of conflict resolution. I think pride can get in the way of this for some adults. Feeling like the other party is undeserving of our forgiveness, or like we have to “punish” them somehow through silent treatment or some other means.

But the truth is we all make mistakes and should aim to forgive as much as we can. It’s not a weakness; it’s a strength.

Has working with children changed how you approach your own life, ambitions, or definition of success?

It has. I try to develop humility, particularly by remaining open to learning from others.

That has actually been one of the nicer things about being on Substack. Opportunities to learn and develop are everywhere. I try to approach everything I read with an open mind and actively look for lessons in my life. Children are like sponges; they do this naturally.

We can even learn from nature. As a Christian, I have come across Scriptures detailing lessons we can glean from ants, birds, lilies, and even the skies.

What is a lesson you’ve learned from a child that you return to often?

Children learn a lot by copying. “I do, we do, you do” is a common teaching method and it works.

As an adult, I try to fight the pride that wells up within me and copy strategies that have worked for others. This goes hand in hand with being teachable. It saves more time than trying unsuccessfully to reinvent the wheel, that’s for sure.

If people spent more time listening to children, what might we learn about ourselves?

I think we would learn that many of our deepest human needs never really disappear; we just become better at disguising them.

Children are often very transparent. They want to belong, to be chosen, to be listened to, and to be understood. Adults want these things too, but we tend to express them differently.

I also think we would learn how much pride can shape our behaviour. Children are usually more willing to ask questions, admit when they do not know something, and seek help when they need it. As adults, we can feel pressure to appear as though we have everything figured out.

Listening to children reminds us that there is strength in humility and that being teachable is not something we should outgrow.

Ultimately, I think children hold up a mirror to our humanity. Their lives highlight both the things we naturally long for and some of the qualities we lose along the way. If we paid closer attention, we might rediscover parts of ourselves that adulthood has taught us to suppress.

The name of this series is Life of Others. What have the lives of the children you’ve met taught you about your own?

They have taught me to approach life with greater humility.

Every child who has entered my classroom has arrived with their own personality, experiences, strengths, and struggles, and observing them has continually reminded me that there is always something new to learn.

Working with children has encouraged me to remain open minded and teachable. It has challenged the idea that growing older means becoming fixed in our ways. Instead, I have tried to adopt some of the qualities children possess so naturally: curiosity, adaptability, forgiveness, and a willingness to try again.

Most importantly, they have taught me not to take life quite so seriously all the time. Children find joy in ordinary moments. They bounce back from disappointments, celebrate small victories, and throw themselves wholeheartedly into the present. Through them, I have been reminded to extend myself grace, embrace the process of learning, and make room for wonder in everyday life.

In many ways, the children I have taught have shaped the adult I am still becoming. They may have arrived in my classroom expecting me to be their teacher, but they have taught me just as much about what it means to be human.

Reading Claudia’s reflections, I found myself returning to a simple question: when did we stop being as teachable as we once were?

Children are often described as unfinished adults, people who have yet to learn how the world works. Yet Claudia’s experiences suggest that, in some ways, they possess qualities many adults spend years trying to recover: curiosity, adaptability, humility, forgiveness.

Perhaps that is what makes this conversation such a fitting addition to Life of Others. It reminds us that wisdom does not always come from those with the most experience, the most authority, or the loudest voice in the room.

Sometimes it comes from paying closer attention to the people we assume have less to teach us.

And sometimes, through the lives of others, we rediscover parts of ourselves.

Life of Others is an ongoing exploration of the human experience. Through conversations with people from different walks of life, we uncover lessons about identity, growth, relationships, and meaning, reminding us that the lives of others often hold a mirror to our own.

I remember thinking, this is not a conversation about a book.

It was never just about a book.

It was about what happens to people when life changes them.

When I asked Michelle to describe herself, she didn’t start with her job or her achievements. She talked about learning. About being outside. About her family. About being challenged by her daughters and shaped by the people around her.

And that matters.

Because the way we describe ourselves says everything about what we believe matters.

She didn’t define herself by what she does. She defined herself by how she lives.

And maybe that is where the story really begins.

Not with what we do, but with who we are becoming.

Michelle didn’t choose change management as much as she grew into it. She started in recruiting, helping people find jobs at moments when they felt uncertain, emotional, sometimes afraid.

Later, she worked with organizations going through transformation. Different context, same experience. People navigating something unfamiliar. People dealing with emotions they couldn’t always name.

And somewhere along the way, she realized something simple but often overlooked.

Change is not about systems or structures. It is about people.

It is about what happens internally when everything externally shifts.

We often talk about change as if it is logical. It isn’t. It is deeply human.

When we spoke about her book Prairie Burn, she described it as a story about resilience and community. About navigating change and bringing people with you when you do.

That idea of bringing people with you kept going through my mind.

Because so often, when things get difficult, we retreat.

We try to handle it alone.

We think strength means independence.

But her story suggests something different.

Strength is connection.

Strength is allowing yourself to be supported while you are finding your way.

The metaphor of the prairie burn says everything that needs to be said.

Every year, the prairie near her home is burned down completely. It turns into something that looks lifeless, empty, finished.

And yet, over time, it comes back.

Not just a little.

Fully.

Stronger. Taller. Alive again.

When she described it, it was impossible not to recognize it.

We have all had moments where things in our lives burned down.

Where we looked at what was left and could not imagine how something new would grow from it.

And still, it does.

Not immediately.

Not easily.

But consistently.

There is something about that reminder that grounds everything else.

Growth does not happen in spite of the burn.

It happens because of it.

When we talked about resilience, she didn’t describe it as pushing through or staying strong.

She described it as recovery.

That shift changes everything.

Because if resilience is recovery, then it allows for struggle.

It allows for moments where you are not okay.

It allows for time.

Resilience is not about avoiding the fall.

It is about what you do after.

And how you find your way forward again.

One of the most powerful parts of the conversation was when we spoke about emotion.

Because in the work both of us do, we often see how organizations approach change.

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With structures. With plans. With communication.

But rarely with enough acknowledgment of what people are actually feeling.

She said something that is both simple and confronting.

Change and emotion belong together.

And sometimes, that emotion is grief.

Grief for what was.

Grief for what is no longer certain.

Grief for a version of yourself that no longer exists.

And yet, we rarely make space for that.

We expect people to move forward without fully acknowledging what they are leaving behind.

That is where change becomes heavy.

Not because people resist.

But because people feel unheard.

When we spoke about finding the fire within, it became clear that this is not something you wait for.

It is something you take responsibility for.

She talked about how not everyone has inspiring leadership or the perfect environment.

And if you don’t, you still have a choice.

You can find that fire somewhere else. Within your work or outside of it, but always in a way that is yours.

That perspective is both empowering and challenging.

Because it removes the excuse.

It places ownership back where it belongs.

With you.

The book itself started differently than it ended.

It began with other people’s stories.

Conversations with people in her community. Moments shared. Experiences collected.

But over time, it became something else.

Her own story started to come out.

Without planning it.

Without controlling it.

Just writing, and realizing that what needed to be said was already there.

And that part matters.

Because sometimes, the things we try to keep structured and contained are the very things that need space.

When she finally decided to publish it, it was no longer just for her.

It became something she wanted to give.

A way to be open. A way to be honest. A way to allow others to see themselves in it.

She wrote her story.

And she hopes others will explore theirs.

Not necessarily by writing a book.

But by being willing to look at it.

To understand it.

To share parts of it when it matters.

Because stories are not just reflections of the past.

They are what help us move forward.

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If there is one thing this conversation made clear, it is this.

We will all go through change.

Some of it we choose.

Some of it we don’t.

There will be moments where things feel like they have burned down completely.

Moments where we question what comes next.

In those moments, the answer is not to rush.

Not to ignore.

Not to push it away.

The answer is to stay with it long enough to understand what is growing underneath.

And to remember that even in the moments that feel empty, something is already starting again.

The fire we are looking for is not something we need to be given.

It is something we need to rediscover.

Again and again.

Read “Prairie Burn: Finding the Fire Within” by Michelle Chiodi through Amazon here.

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My childhood was full of drama and obstacles, and I was ready to leave it behind. I even got hospitalized the summer I was about to move. Six operations were needed, and I was in a wheelchair. But there was no way I would postpone my dream of a new life. The first time I went outside in my wheelchair, I heard the birds sing, and I was so impressed, as if it were my first time ever outside. The sun was shining on my skin. It was perfect, and I hoped that I would forever keep that feeling alive.

I didn’t have many boxes or personal items, but what I did have was hope and a lot of dreams. I had only been to Amsterdam once, with my then-boyfriend, and we didn’t even make it close to the city center (one of the worst areas, actually), and yet I was already so impressed by the city. I knew I wanted to live here even before that one time. I had just made up my mind: this was going to be it. A city of diversity, so much to do, and so much life. To me, it looked like freedom.

Today I’m packing my bags to leave Amsterdam, and for the first time in a long time, I’m taking a trip down memory lane. Back to the hopes, the dreams, and now the aftermath: what did I do in those 13 years, and was it what I hoped for? I’m thinking about the studies I did and the wonderful people I met, my first job and all the jobs that came after, my first car, and falling in love multiple times until I found the greatest man on earth 9 years ago, whom I can still call my boyfriend. I’m thinking about always discovering new places, my endless love for coffee to go, rushing for trams, and the strange way a city can become yours through ordinary things. But there was also a lot of pain: dealing with what happened, or didn’t happen, in the past, people I wished had played a different role in my life, jobs I hated, being tired all the time, and friendships that have run their course. Who’s helping me pack now that I’m moving to a new city? Which people make it to my next chapter, and which ones do I leave in this one? Leaving a city is never only about a place. It is also about saying goodbye to the version of yourself that once arrived there, full of need and hope.

The reason I’m opening my laptop to write this article for Life of Others is that I realize now that dreams change. Everything changes. My hopes and expectations changed. I changed. And now my home changes with me. Sometimes it comes with grief: the dreams and hopes we left behind. The people we leave emotionally behind. One of my biggest dreams from 13 years ago, related to my family, I realize now, didn’t come true. And that hurts. I wanted it so badly and worked (emotionally) so hard for it, yet it isn’t there (yet). Maybe because some dreams are not really about the thing itself, but about what we hope it will give us: safety, permanence, the feeling of finally having arrived somewhere. As if we need it to feel worthy or complete.

For most of the past 13 years, my motto was to work harder. Because if you work hard, a lot is possible. Today I’m thinking that if you need to work so hard for certain things or relationships, they might not be for you. A lot reveals itself when you stop pushing. Some things naturally fall away when you stop working so hard to keep them going. Even though it’s painful, I think it’s been a good lesson, too.

Coming from a small town, where people often thought small and where it was easy to stand out in the wrong way, Amsterdam felt freeing. It gave me room to experiment, to disappear a little, and to become someone else. I remember my best friend Ilse, who became my first real friend in Amsterdam, nudging me into all kinds of firsts: different kinds of boys to date, my first cigarette, discovering het Gooi, and many other things. I remember dreaming of switching to university and being told by a coordinator that my chances of succeeding were less than 1%, and then finishing my studies without delay, with a GPA of 7.5. Sometimes you have to trust that you know what is best for you, even when others can’t see it yet.

So yes, I’m packing my bags to start a new chapter in a new town. I’m grateful for all that this town has brought me in the past 13 years. Dreams are allowed to change. That is today’s motto. But maybe growing up also means learning that a good life is not something you force into existence. Sometimes it is something quieter that reveals itself when you stop chasing what no longer fits. It’s been a year of changes, because I have changed. And I will continue to keep on changing, I guess that’s also the beauty of life.

It’s time to look forward and trust that what comes next does not have to look like the life I once imagined to still be mine.

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Not so long ago, I joined an event for female entrepreneurs about working with your menstrual cycle. The idea was simple. There are moments in a month that come with different kinds of energy. Times for pushing forward, times for slowing down, times for speaking up, and times for rest. I found it fascinating, not only because it reminded me how much wisdom there is in the body, but also because it made me think about if and how to bring it to work. We talk a lot about productivity, performance, and resilience, but much less about what people actually need to do good work and if ‘working with your cycle’ is feasible in the corporate world where demands are constantly there and you can’t always create your own schedule.

At work, the colleague I work most closely with knows my cycle and I know hers. When one of us is having a harder week, we try to give each other a bit more space. If one of us is less cheerful, less social, or simply less available, that is okay too. I remember checking the date of my evaluation conversation and feeling relieved that it fell in the right week, a week in which I would feel more steady and more open to feedback. For a long time, I thought of these things as private adjustments, small accommodations happening quietly underneath professional life. But more and more, I think they say something important about what a healthy workplace looks like. Not a place where people have to act like machines, but a place where people do not have to hide being human.

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This week, during a call with two women and one man, we were discussing a new project and whether one of the women wanted to present something vulnerable in an upcoming workshop. “Let me check my calendar,” she said. And yes, she decided to do it partly because it would happen in the right week for her. I was surprised, even though I do this sometimes too for important events. It opened a conversation about what it actually means to work well together. I caught myself apologizing to the man for us talking about this, but he was not uncomfortable at all. He simply said that these conversations were not unfamiliar to him, he was married to a woman and had those same conversations regularly. I was positively surprised by his reaction too. Maybe the future of work is not about asking people to leave parts of themselves at the door. Maybe it is about creating workplaces where honesty is not seen as unprofessional, but simply as part of working together, also when it comes down to the rhythm of your body.

Once people feel safe enough to say what is true for them, something shifts. Work becomes less about appearances and more about trust. People do not have to spend so much energy pretending they are fine when they are not, or pushing themselves into the same rhythm every day just because that is what professionalism is supposed to look like. There is more room for timing, for honesty, and for paying attention to one another. To me, that does not make a workplace weaker. It makes it more solid, because trust holds much more than silence ever can.

I am not saying that every workplace needs to organize itself around menstrual cycles. I am saying that workplaces should be willing to ask a more honest question about the people inside them. What do people need in order to do meaningful work together? Not ideal workers, not endlessly available workers, but actual people. If we started there, I think many of our ideas about culture, leadership, and collaboration would begin to shift. We might stop expecting people to keep their humanity private and their professionalism public. We might build workplaces where those things are not in conflict with each other. And maybe that is not a side conversation at all. Maybe it belongs much closer to the center.

That is what this reflection keeps coming back to for me. A good workplace is not one where everyone is expected to fit the same shape. It is one where people are trusted enough to know themselves, to speak honestly, and to work with some awareness of what they need and what others might need too. That does not lower the bar. If anything, it changes the basis on which people meet each other and work together. There is less pretending, and more room for real contribution.

And I think that matters far beyond this one topic. The moment people can be honest about one part of their experience at work, it often becomes easier to be honest about other things too. Capacity. Stress. Timing. Confidence. Support. That kind of honesty only grows where there is safety. Maybe that is what a healthy workplace really is. Not a place where everyone has to perform strength all the time, but a place where people can be real and still work well together.

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After the call, I sat down with my coffee and found myself walking down memory lane. I’ve congratulated him before, when he was engaged years ago. But just before that wedding, his fiancée fell in love with someone else. The engagement was off.

Heartbroken as he was, he told me then, and stuck to it, that he would never give up and would never close his heart. And he didn’t. I saw him go through heartbreak after heartbreak, but always believing his day would come.

This wasn’t just the case in his love life. It was how he approached his work too. He always took his jobs seriously. Long hours. Full dedication. I remember years ago, someone walking past the office where I was in a meeting and saying, “What is he always pretending to be so busy with? If there’s someone who doesn’t do anything, it’s him.”

I was never entirely sure what he was working those long days on either, but he kept going. He took harsh feedback more than once. People talked about him behind his back. I sometimes asked myself why he kept at it. But his answer was always the same: if he stayed true to his way of doing things, people would eventually see it. And now, years later, he has his dream job, and people love working with him.

There were times I thought he was being naive. After so much failure, maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Both in his love as work life. Maybe he should try something completely different. But today, I am glad I was wrong. It inspires me.

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Yesterday, I celebrated a friend’s degree, more than ten years in the making. For years, she would stay up studying until 5 a.m. (and no, not because of parties). She worked harder than most people I know. But exam after exam, she didn’t pass.

Time went on. She got married, had two children, and decided to work part-time at the side job she had always had so she could spend more time with them. I saw her cry in frustration many times. She never planned to use her degree for work, her priority was being with her kids. So more than once, I told her it might be okay to quit.

In my mind, I thought about the frustration, her mental health, the time she didn’t have, and the cost of going to school year after year. But she told me she couldn’t. She had set her mind to it. And she wanted her kids to see what it meant to never give up.

At the brunch I organized to celebrate her graduation, I gave a short speech about how proud I am of her, of the great friend, mother, and person she is. Afterwards, she told me she understood why I had said so many times it was okay to quit. I was there for the tears. But she also said she wished I hadn’t said it.

Listening to them, one after the other, I realized they share something rare. They kept going when it would have been easier to stop. They faced not just the work of trying, but the risk of being seen trying again after failing. And maybe that is the hardest part, not the hours or the effort, but showing up with the same hope after you have been let down.

And so here I am, coffee in hand, thinking about these two conversations. I am glad they didn’t quit. But more than that, I am glad they didn’t close their hearts, hopes, and dreams. That they never changed who they are just because of the harsh feedback and laughs behind their backs that sometimes brought. That they weren’t afraid to be seen trying, over and over again. Failing, and then trying again.

They did it because they believed they could. And they could.
They put aside what other people were saying, because they saw the bigger picture.
They saw the happy ending in this all, where others were focusing on the in-between failure.

It made me wonder how often we close the door too soon, not because we cannot go on, but because we are afraid of being seen in the middle of the climb. What might happen if we kept going, with an open heart, just a little longer?

I hope that if you have a dream, you will always stay true to yourself, even when others make fun of it or say you better quit. With an open heart, the final, happy destination will be found.

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Over lunch, we casually wonder whether we should go and how buying tickets even works, and the people sitting next to us overhear. So does the waitress. Someone says they have an aunt working at the stadium and starts texting, and two hours later I find myself attending my first rugby match ever.

I do not know the rules well enough to predict anything, so I arrive without expectations and with only curiosity. Outside the stadium, the atmosphere is already alive: people are dressed up, eating and drinking, standing together, and the whole thing feels open and inviting, helped along by the warm sun and the kind of weather that makes everyone want to stay a little longer.

And once we sit down, what I notice first has very little to do with the game itself.

The referee is a woman, and there is no announcement, no explanation, no sense that this requires comment. She is simply there, doing her job, and no one around me seems surprised. We are, because we sometimes go to football matches in Amsterdam and have never seen a female referee there.

Then I notice the cheerleaders: men and women together, moving with the same ease and confidence, and it changes the feel of the whole place.

In the stands, groups of men and women dance together, not only during the breaks but whenever the music starts, which is often. Every sound seems to invite movement. Arms go up, people laugh, and the experience feels less like watching something from the outside and more like being part of it.

There are far more women than I expected, certainly more than I have ever seen at football matches, and they are not at the edges of the experience. They are sitting together, standing together, dancing, shouting, following the game closely. They are clearly part of the culture of the place, not guests in it and not exceptions to it.

The people sitting next to us draw us in even though we have never met. No one tests what I know. No one starts explaining the rules unless I ask. No one assumes I am there because of someone else. What stands out is how easy it is to belong before you fully understand, as if showing up is enough to be welcomed into the experience.

Rugby here feels social before it feels technical, and that changes everything about how you enter it. The game matters, of course, but you do not need to understand everything to feel part of it. That was a relief for me, because I knew almost nothing. You can still get drawn in. You can cheer when everyone else cheers, join in with the music, and slowly find your bearings. It does not feel like a space reserved for people who already know the rules. It feels open, and that makes a difference.

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I also notice that although the game itself is physical, that energy does not turn into aggression in the crowd. The atmosphere is lively, but it never feels hostile. And the fact that the referee is a woman is just taken as normal. No one seems to think twice about it. She is in charge, and everyone accepts that.

That normality stayed with me. Seeing women there in so many visible roles changes the feeling of the place, even if no one says a word about it. It means you are not noticing women because they stand out; you are noticing that they are fully part of what is going on. No one looks like they are trying to take up less space. No one looks out of place. There is something easy about that, and you can feel it around you.

Watching this, I kept coming back to the same thought for People and Transformation: belonging is shaped long before anyone names it. Policies matter, and programmes matter, but they do not decide on their own whether people feel able to step in, speak up, or take up space. That happens in the everyday signals a workplace sends out: who is trusted, who is visible, who gets room to contribute, and who learns to stay slightly smaller in order to fit. If we want transformation to be real, we have to pay much closer attention to those signals, because they are what tell people whether change includes them or simply asks more of them.

That is also where the work becomes practical. In the workplace, this means looking beyond what is written down and paying attention to the experience people are actually having. Who gets heard in meetings. Who is backed when they take the lead. Whose way of showing up is seen as credible. Who feels they can join without first proving they belong. For anyone working in People and Transformation, that is not a side issue. It is the work. Because change lands very differently when the environment already tells some people they are welcome and others that they need to adapt first.

By the end of the match, I realise I have been watching the people as much as the rugby, and in some ways that is the part I will remember most.

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One man tells me he was born in 1961, and that apartheid shaped his entire childhood. He says it without bitterness, almost matter-of-factly. He grew up being taught that people with black skin were worth less than others, not through one explicit lesson, but through everything around him: school, work, the silences people learned to live inside. He says it left him with an inferiority complex that stayed with him for years.

To earn a decent living, he spent years working offshore, away from home for long stretches at a time. That, he tells me, was the price. It was only there, working closely with white colleagues, that something in him began to shift. He laughs when he says it, remembering how surprised he was by their kindness, their ordinariness, their humanity. It sounds simple when he tells it now, but it was not simple at all. It ran against everything he had been taught as a child.

He has six children now, and all of them have had the chance to study. When he says that, something changes in his face. This, he tells me, is what progress looks like. Not because the past has disappeared, but because the future no longer has to look exactly like it did before. He calls his wife while we are talking; she is on holiday in Europe. We speak about the place where he picked us up, and he tells me that it is also where his youngest daughter got married. He worked hard for the life he has now. His childhood was not easy, and still he keeps returning to the same belief: that staying positive and working hard will, in the end, be rewarded.

I hear other stories too, especially from people who came from Zimbabwe to South Africa. They talk about work disappearing back home, about Chinese companies taking over more and more of the construction, mining, and infrastructure projects, and about jobs that technically still exist but no longer feel open to local people in the same way. The hours are long, the pay is low, and there is very little room to grow. Decisions are made far away, with almost no sense that the people affected by them have any voice in them. Some tell me the work had already changed before they left. Others say the work was still there, but the dignity had gone out of it. Either way, staying no longer made sense.

What becomes clear to me, again and again, is how deeply work is tied to dignity here. To identity. To the possibility of imagining a future that does not simply repeat the past. And when work no longer offers that, people move, even when moving costs them home, language, and everything familiar.

In my work in People and Change, we often speak about mindset shifts, transformation, and readiness as if people are all starting from the same place. These conversations remind me that they are not. Change is never neutral. History, inequality, and lived experience are already in the room long before any programme begins, shaping how change is heard, what it costs, and who is expected to carry the heaviest part of it.

That matters for transformation work, because not everyone experiences work in the same way. For some, work is a place for growth and ambition. For others, it is still closely tied to dignity, safety, and the chance to be seen differently from what the world once told them they were worth. If we ignore that, we risk designing change that looks fair on paper but lands unevenly in practice.

The man born in 1961 tells me he believes things will continue to improve, and that his children will live different lives from the one he knew. When he says that, it is clear that this matters to him more than anything else.

Back in my own work, I think about how often change initiatives focus on what needs to move forward: new ways of working, new behaviours, new structures. All of that matters. But this experience reminds me that good transformation work also starts with context. It asks who has room to adapt, who has learned to stay guarded, who may hear change as opportunity, and who may hear it as another loss of control. If we want change to last, we have to understand those differences rather than design past them.

In practice, that means creating space in the workplace to understand how people are meeting change before we ask them to carry more of it. It means listening early, not only through surveys and formal stakeholder maps, but through honest conversations about what people are worried about, what they have learned to protect, and what trust would actually require from leadership. It means helping managers recognise that resistance is not always reluctance; sometimes it is experience speaking. And it means designing transformation with enough humanity that people can see themselves in it, rather than experience it as something being done to them.

Change does not begin when a programme starts. By then, it is already shaped by history, access, trust, and the lived experience people bring with them. That is the real takeaway for me in People and Transformation: before we ask people to change, we need to understand what change has already asked of them. The work is not only to move an organisation forward, but to do it in a way that people can recognise as fair, human, and possible.

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When everyone is done with their introductions, the table falls still.

One person is asking me about hobbies, and I tell them about Life of Others. “So will you write about us?” she asks me. I might, I answer. The rest of the group gets intrigued and I ask them all the question:

What would you do as a job if you could start all over again? Would you do the job you have now or something else?

And I’m not even sure why I asked that question because I kind of hate that question. It suggests that starting over would be something hypothetical, not something you can choose today.

Anyway, except for the one doing the internship, everybody would have picked something else. Ranging from working in fashion to marketing to do something with plants.

Hearing these stories and seeing passion in their eyes of what could have been, my energy starts to leak. I feel disappointment. Because my follow up question to everyone was “well, why not just do it now then?” And everyone answered with things that all came down to stability. Knowing what you have now, not sure what you will get. Financial decrease in starting over. Going back to school would not work with kids, et cetera et cetera. Most of it comes down to fear.

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I wrote my thesis back in the day on being ‘locked-in’: staying in a job you hate. I was so intrigued by it, and still am. First of all that so many people voluntarily raised their hand to talk to a stranger like myself about this topic. Second that all of them, one by one, really disliked (hate) their job, but stayed anyway. For all the “sensible” reasons, just like the women described above. These were good earning people. My first thought (back then, I think a bit differently now) was that if you would make so much money, you hopefully put something in your savings account that would fill the gap if you have another job that would pay less. And what is your mental health and joy in life worth to you?

Quoting my friend on this: all the extra money that you get from staying in that terrible job, you spend on things (massages, meditation, etc) to reduce that stress. Lol.
I was there at some point in my career.

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At work, we often talk about retention, engagement, or performance. But rarely about the quiet dreams people hold while they are doing the job. The passions that never made it onto their CV. The ambitions they tucked away because life asked for something steadier. Yet those hidden sparks matter. They shape how alive people feel when they show up on Monday. They influence how long someone stays, or how much of themselves they are willing to bring to the table. And imho, if they create the full potential of life.

Don’t get me wrong, all of this makes sense. And it was not like the women at the network event are hating their jobs right now. Me, myself, and I know all about working towards stability. But there has always been a side in me that just loves sparks. If we would all figure out what gives us that spark and make it bigger or more frequent, I think we would have such a more beautiful world. It doesn’t necessarily need to be IN your job, but it would be great if it is. Otherwise I hope you fill your cup outside of work.

And I get it, when things are not that bad you might not have enough incentive to move. And I get that you need a certain amount of money every month to pay your bills. But am I too big of a dreamer to think that you should follow dreams? And that you are never too old to chase them? And that if in this part of the world, if you really want something, you can make it work?

Walking back home, I’m thinking how to integrate this more in my job as People & Culture manager. We talk about promotions, performance, and succession planning, but maybe not enough about the quiet “what ifs” people carry. Not about the spark that still sits under the surface. And maybe that is the real loss. Because when people feel safe enough to explore or experiment, even in small ways, they bring more of themselves to work. They feel more alive. And that energy is contagious.

Dreams do not always need to be dramatic leaps. Sometimes it is one small step that keeps you close to yourself. The choice is whether we take it.

So I wonder, what is the spark you have tucked away, and what would it take to bring a piece of it back into your life?

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The air conditioning is off. I try to turn it back on. Nothing happens.
I check my phone. It has not been charging.

At first, it feels like the kind of inconvenience you deal with half-awake and postpone until morning, not the beginning of anything particularly serious.

By the time morning arrives, though, it is obvious that this is more than a minor disruption: there is no electricity, no internet, and no real connection to anything beyond the room.

When I walk into the village, I realize almost immediately that it is not just us; everyone is saying the same thing, that the power went out overnight because of the heavy bush fires burning nearby.

Franschhoek is a small place, and on most days that smallness feels peaceful; that morning, it makes the whole village seem exposed in a way I had not noticed before.

We decide to leave, but finding a taxi without internet is far more difficult than it sounds, so I walk around, ask a few people, and eventually end up in a local store, one of the few places where the WiFi is still working well enough for me to get online and find a driver.

When she picks us up, she looks relieved.

“I wasn’t sure how I would get out of here,” she says. “Or if I would even find people.”

It is a one and a half hour drive to our next location, far away from the fires. We talk almost the entire way.

We begin by talking about the fire itself, about how large it had become and how much damage it had already done, and then, almost inevitably, the conversation moves to the people and animals who could not get out, to the kinds of prayers people whisper when they feel powerless, and to how difficult it is to accept that not everyone will be spared.

During the ride, we can still see fires burning in the distance. Small lines of orange against the hills. Under control now, she says. But still there.

Then she tells me about the night before.

She tells me about evacuating people in her taxi while she could barely see, with smoke everywhere, darkness all around, and almost no visibility, and she says that was what unsettled her most: not being able to see where she was going or how close the fire really was.

People in the backseat were panicking too. Asking questions. Looking at her for reassurance.

She was frightened too, but she knew she could not let that be the thing her passengers saw, because what they needed from her in that moment was steadiness, capability, and some visible sense that someone was still in control.

In the morning, everything looks different: the sky is clear, the hills are visible again, and you can trace where the fire has been, but during the night there was nothing to orient yourself by, only decisions that still had to be made.

“You still have to deliver,” she says. “You still have to get people out. You can’t panic along with them, that would only make things worse.”

“There is no training for moments like these.”

What she says feels familiar to me for that reason, because work can ask for much the same thing: you prepare, you plan, you train, and then something happens that no plan fully covers, visibility disappears, information is incomplete, and people still look to you for reassurance and direction.

So you step forward and make the best decision you can with what you have, all the while carrying that quieter question underneath it, whether it will hold, whether it will help, whether it will be enough, because even when you are unsure, the moment still asks something of you and leaves very little room to wait until certainty arrives.

As we reach the highway, our phones come back to life. Messages arrive. The world continues as if nothing happened.

Weeks later, that conversation still stays with me, not because of the fire alone, but because of what it demanded of her, and because work so often asks something similar of us: to keep moving without full visibility, to remain calm enough for others to feel safe, and to do what needs to be done without knowing in advance whether it will be enough.

Maybe that is part of leadership, not having perfect answers before you begin, but staying steady and adaptable enough to respond well to whatever the moment asks of you.

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In Zimbabwe, on my safari trip, most of the conversations do not happen during the game drives. They happen at the campfire. Or in the quiet moments between rides, when the dust has settled and everyone is waiting for the next day to begin.

I talk to the people who work there and find myself wondering what kind of (work) life they are living.

Our safari guide tells me about his schedule. For years, it was fifty six days on. Now it is forty, after they complained about it for years. Then fourteen days off, back ‘home’. Every day the same work, he says. But every day still surprises him, as if it is the first time. As if the animals do not know his routine. When I hear him say “wow” every time we spot an animal, I initially wonder if it is part of the performance. A way to make us even more excited. But over time, I realize his excitement is real. That for him, every day truly feels like a new adventure.
How beautiful, I think, to keep looking at your (work) life like this.

We talk about the future. He met a woman he wants to marry. Yet, this lifestyle doesn’t match what their future may need. He’s thinking out loud about ways to stay connected to safari and having a ‘normal’ family life next to it. Maybe less tours, more marketing. You can see the struggle: the love for the job that expects availability and presence and the love for a partner that wants availability and presence as well.

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I also talk to the other staff members. A man and a woman who are partners both work in the camp. Their children stay with their in laws. When they finally go home, it is a fourteen hour night bus ride. Those hours come out of the days they have. Time is already scarce before they even arrive. When they are back in the city, they feel overwhelmed. Too much noise. Too many people. Too many decisions. It feels like another world. They say it takes days to adjust. And then it is time to leave again. Their children keep growing in the meantime.

As someone who grew up with absent parents, I have to admit that I initially feel a bit of judgement. But I keep talking to the woman. She speaks with so much passion about her work. About being in nature, with the animals. The colleagues she works with have become her family too. I start to see both sides. The pain of missing her children. And the courage of choosing a life that makes her feel alive every day. An unconventional life, maybe. But one she knows is hers. She knows this is her dream job. And she acts on it. I think that’s pretty brave.

Except for this couple, no one here that I talked to is married. Not always because they do not want to be. But because life at home asks for something different than what this work rhythm allows them to give. Stability. Presence. Regular weekends. Things that sound small until you do not have them. It is the life they chose.

One person around my age tells me what he misses most. Friday evenings with friends. Just being there, having a beer. Spontaneous. I ask him if it’s not lonely to live like this. But just like all the people I’m meeting here, the life they are getting from being in this little bubble is so worth it that they don’t want otherwise.

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Becoming a safari guide is competitive. Fewer than five people are certified each year in the whole country, according to the people there. Applications are high. The selection is strict. It is work people dream of. Work people are proud of. And only a few make it.

I realize how much this job asks beyond skill and passion. It shapes relationships. It dictates where children grow up. It decides how often you get to be part of ordinary life. There’s so much beauty of this world here, yet as an outsider, I see also the price they are paying for it.

Back in the days when I was studying work and organizational psychology, ‘meaningful work’ was one of the most common things we discussed. Something to strive for. Purpose. Impact. Doing something you love. Sitting by the fire, it becomes clear that meaningful work always comes with trade offs. Some visible. Some quietly absorbed over time.

How often do we talk about this with our colleagues? About what certain roles demand from people’s personal lives. About the kinds of lives our work designs make possible. And the ones it makes harder.

I made it back home, back to corporate life, where we like to celebrate dedication. Commitment. Going the extra mile. But here in the bubble of safari, dedication looks like missing birthdays. Commitment looks like a night bus instead of a bed. The extra mile looks like distance from the people you love.

Watching the fire burn down, I realized that work does not just shape careers. It shapes lives. And as People and Change professionals, our responsibility is to acknowledge what transformation demands from people, not only what it promises.

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