30/12/2025
I turned 45 on Sunday.
At 34, I took the biggest risk of my career, leaving full time employment to start my own coaching business.
I never thought at 45, I’d be doing it again.
Coaching was the dream. I didn’t want to do anything else.
But things changed.
I changed.
A longing for learning, something new, arose.
Now I’m on a path where the outcome is uncertain. Studying politics and international relations to understand what’s going on at the global leadership level. With no idea of what will happen next.
But if these last few years have reminded me of anything, it’s:
1) If your problems this year were the same as last year’s, your life is not your problem. Fear is.
2) If you’re not happy with anything in your life, you’ll have to take a risk to change it. Accept that or accept life as it is. Or risk always living in pain.
3) You don’t hate your job. You hate who you have to be to survive it.
4) Sometimes it’s harder to change direction when things are going well, not when they are broken.
5) Stability in what you care about is peace. Stability in what no longer fits is death to the soul.
6) Being successful at something you’ve outgrown is a unique type of grief.
7) Most people aren’t stuck because they lack options. They’re stuck because every option threatens who they have been.
8) Nobody is coming to save you. But that doesn’t mean you have to face everything alone. If you get stuck, ask for help.
9) Reinvention is easier when you stop treating your past choices as permanent commitments. Give yourself permission to let go.
10) Remember - just because your path looks different, it doesn’t mean you are lost.
11) You don’t have to justify your choices to anyone. The only person who needs to make peace with them is you.
12) Starting again does not mean starting from zero; you’re bringing experience and wisdom with you.
13) At 45, what matters is not how much experience you have, but the courage to use it differently.
The most important lesson of all?
Family above everything else. Always.
Which lesson resonates with you the most?