No Transformation Without Choices (But Find Your Moment)

When Who You Are and What You Do Become One

It’s a rare and wonderful thing when who you are and what you do finally align. For years, I searched for that alignment, driven not by ambition, but by a quiet question I couldn’t shake: What makes a life well-lived?

Like many, I chased answers through books, retreats, and a string of personal experiments. My friends once called me a “serial hobbyist.” But behind it all wasn’t a hunger to be better or more successful. It was a deeper yearning: to feel that my life was mine—and true.

And I’ve found that the clearest mirror for that question is death.

Australian palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware famously recorded the top regrets of the dying. Among them:

‍

• I wish I’d lived a life true to myself, not the one others expected of me.
  
  
• I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
  
  
• I wish I had let myself be happier.
  
  

These lines echo in my work with leaders. In quiet moments, they whisper the same things.

My father passed away recently at the age of 91. He was a psychoanalyst—forever drawn to life’s deeper currents. Even in his final years, our conversations remained anchored in meaning. When I asked him how he looked back on his life, he didn’t hesitate: “My children. My loved ones.” That was the answer. Not the books he wrote, not the titles he carried. Just love, remembered.

‍

Every Transformation Requires Letting Go

Transformation always involves a kind of death. Not literal, of course—but the ending of something that no longer fits. A belief. A role. A relationship. A story about who you thought you were supposed to be.

These are the small deaths we resist—but must face.

We don’t get to control the timing of the big ending. But we can choose to live in ways that make peace with it. That honours the truth, now.

And that often means choosing.

Finding the Moment of Choice

Staying inside the pattern feels safe. Reflection, training, insight—they’re essential. But eventually, the moment comes. The moment to act. The moment to say yes or no. In my work, I see three ways leaders tend to meet that edge

‍

1. The Quick Route 

Sometimes we rush the decision, eager to move forward. When the choice is clear, that’s fine. But often, speed is avoidance. We change the external without addressing the internal, and the same patterns quietly return.

2. The Delayed Route ‍

Other times, we linger too long in uncertainty. Fear dresses up as caution. We stall, rationalize, and stay in the old pain because at least it’s familiar. But the body always knows. And it eventually calls us back to what we’ve avoided.‍

3. The Burning Route ‍

The most powerful leaders I know sit in the discomfort. They let the heat of uncertainty burn through the noise. They let go of what they think they should be. And that burn—the liminal fire—brings clarity. Real clarity. The kind that doesn't need convincing.

‍

Cutting Through Distractions

Then, there’s a shift. Not a decision made from logic alone, but from something deeper. A quiet certainty.

And it feels like a sword cutting between the old and the new.

No more mental debate. No more weighing pros and cons. Just the next right action, felt in the body. You speak the truth to your partner. You step away from what no longer fits. You choose growth over comfort. You claim your life again.

That moment is uncertain. But it’s also liberating.

And from it, a new world opens—wider, stronger, more yours than ever before.

‍