The Women Leadership Academy

This week, I coached two different women.

Different backgrounds.
Different careers.
Different challenges.

Yet both said the same thing:

“I should be further ahead by now.”

Not “I’m ashamed.”

Not “I’m not enough.”

Just…

“I should be further ahead.”

This is what shame often sounds like in high-achieving women.

For years, I compared myself to men.

The men getting promoted.
The men speaking up.
The men who seemed so confident.

I thought comparison was pushing me to grow.

In reality, it was quietly reinforcing the belief that I wasn’t enough yet.

What changed?

✨ I stopped seeing successful people as competition and started seeing them as proof of what’s possible.

✨ I stopped comparing myself to others and started comparing myself to the woman I was a year ago.

Confidence didn’t come from achieving more.

It came from recognizing how much I had already grown.

What’s one thing your past self would be proud of today?
👇

Comparison is one of the fastest ways to lose confidence.

Not because someone else is doing better.

But because we use their success as evidence that we’re not enough.

The truth?

There will always be someone ahead of you.
Someone earning more.
Someone with a bigger business.
Someone who seems more confident.

If your confidence depends on being better than others, you’ll never feel secure.

Instead, compare yourself to the woman you used to be.

The woman who was afraid to speak up.
The woman who doubted herself.
The woman who didn’t know what she was capable of.

That comparison doesn’t create shame.

It creates appreciation.
It creates pride.
It creates self-trust.

Your growth is not measured by how far you are from someone else.

It’s measured by how far you’ve come.

✨ What’s one way you’ve grown in the last year? Tell me in the comments.

This week alone, I coached 5 women on one topic:

Saying NO.

And here’s what I think:

Most women don’t struggle to say NO because they don’t know how.

They struggle because of the emotions that might come after.

Guilt.

Shame.

Anxiety.

Embarrassment.

So saying YES feels easier.

At least in the moment.

What I’ve noticed is that these women already know what they want to say.

They know they don’t have capacity.

They know they need a boundary.

They know they can’t keep putting everyone else’s needs before their own.

The challenge isn’t the boundary.

The challenge is being willing to feel the emotions that follow.

The guilt of disappointing someone.

The anxiety of potential conflict.

The shame of being judged.

The fear of looking selfish.

The goal isn’t to get rid of these emotions.

The goal is to learn that you can feel them and still choose what is right for you.

Because every YES to someone else can become a NO to yourself.

And over time, that’s what leads to resentment, exhaustion and disconnection from what you really want.

💭 Which emotion makes it hardest for you to say NO?

pewnoscsiebie

I turned 41 this week.

And I realized something that took me years to understand.

Whenever someone told me:

“You’re courageous.”

I immediately felt uncomfortable.

Embarrassed.

And my response was always:

“I had no choice.”

For years, I thought that was humility. Being a good girl.

Now I see something different.

Because the wasn’t really about the compliment.

The embarrassment was protecting me from something deeper.

Shame.

The shame that said:

“Don’t brag.”

“Don’t think too highly of yourself.”

“Good women stay humble.”

“What if people think you’re arrogant?”

So instead of receiving the compliment, I minimized my story.

“It wasn’t a big deal.”

“I was lucky.”

“I had no choice.”

But recently I realized something.

I DID have a choice.

I could have stayed in a successful corporate career.

I could have stayed where life felt predictable.

I could have chosen certainty over uncertainty.

What I called “having no choice” was actually courage.

And what I called “just doing what needed to be done” was actually confidence.

At 41, I’m learning that accepting a compliment isn’t arrogance.

It’s self-recognition.

It’s owning your story.

The courage.
The sacrifices.
The risks.
The growth.

And I deeply wish more women would do the same.

❤️

Save it for when you will need it.

[PL below] A client said something to me recently a sentence that I haven’t stopped thinking about:

“I don’t know who I am without my husband.”

And honestly… I think many women silently feel this way.

I know how easy it is to slowly build your life around the relationship.
To prioritise everyone else.
To become “the partner,” “the wife,” “the supportive one”…The mother. The daughter.

And one day realise:
you haven’t asked yourself in a long time:

What do I want?
Who am I outside of this relationship?

This post is not about blaming relationships.
It’s about remembering yourself inside them.

Because love should not make you disappear.
It should make you feel even more connected to who you already are.

You are allowed to have:
your own dreams,
your own voice,
your own identity.

So maybe today is a good moment to reconnect with the woman behind the role.

And I’m genuinely curious:

What is one thing that defines YOU outside of your relationship? share it with who needs to hear it.


Klientka powiedziała mi ostatnio coś, o czym nie mogę przestać myśleć:

„Nie wiem, kim jestem bez mojego męża.”

I szczerze… myślę, że wiele kobiet czuje podobnie, tylko rzadko mówi o tym głośno.

Bardzo łatwo jest powoli budować swoje życie wokół relacji.
Stawiać innych na pierwszym miejscu.
Stać się „partnerką”, „żoną”, „tą wspierającą”…

A potem pewnego dnia zorientować się, że od dawna nie zadałaś sobie pytań:

Czego JA chcę?
Kim JA jestem poza tą relacją?

Ten post nie jest przeciwko związkom.
To przypomnienie o sobie samej w relacji.

Bo miłość nie powinna sprawiać, że znikasz.
Powinna pomagać Ci być jeszcze bliżej siebie.

Masz prawo mieć:
własne marzenia,
własny głos,
własną tożsamość.

Może więc dziś jest dobry moment, żeby znów połączyć się z kobietą poza rolą, którą pełnisz.

I jestem naprawdę ciekawa:

Co jest jedną rzeczą, która definiuje Ciebie poza związkiem?

I didn’t start with a plan. 9 years ago, I became a mother and had one very clear thought: 👉 If I’m away from my daughter 8 hours a day, it has to be for something I truly love.

I didn’t know how to get there. So I started small. I joined coaching programs, changed jobs, and followed what genuinely interested me. There were moments of doubt and moments where I didn’t know if it would work. 👉 But I kept moving.

And for the last 3 years, I can honestly say: I do what I love. Workshops. Group coaching. Working with women who are aligned in values and vision.

And I’ve seen this in myself and in many women I work with: we don’t lose ambition. 👉 We slowly make it smaller. We adjust it to what feels realistic, safe, and expected.

So how do you reconnect with what is truly yours? This is what I’ve seen make a real difference: go back to your earlier dreams — what did you want before you started filtering it? Turn it into intention — how do you want to feel every day? And act before you feel ready — what’s one step you could take today?

👉 Send this to a woman who might need to hear this and tell me what did you want before you made it “realistic”? 🌱