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Hi Reader, Welcome to Your Dose of Mana — a quick, weekly note with: If your biggest business challenges are actually people challenges, you’re in the right place. 1 Real Story About five years ago, one of my besties from business school got hit in the head with a golf club. Not figuratively. Literally. A day and a half later, he woke up in the ICU with a traumatic brain injury. He spent months recovering. We were talking recently, and I asked him something I’d always wondered: Was that the moment you stopped identifying as a consultant and started identifying as an artist? His answer? “Abso-freaking-lutely.” That stuck with me. Because lately I’ve been in a chapter of re-evaluating. What I want. I love the work I do. Helping leaders understand people. When I’m doing the actual work, I’m in the flow. But the process of getting the work? That’s different. The constant visibility. That part drains the life out of me. And it’s made me wonder: Do we really need a traumatic wake-up call before we start paying attention to the quieter signals? Because, most of the time, the clues are already there. 1 Leadership Insight This happens in leadership and in life. We tend to wait for a moment. A sign. A disruption. But leadership, at least the healthy kind, usually asks for something harder: Honesty before urgency. The work you procrastinate on repeatedly? Those patterns matter. And so does the question underneath them: Whose definition of success am I using? For most of my life, I’ve been driven. Ambitious. Opportunity-oriented. I’ve always felt pulled toward meaningful work. But somewhere along the way, many of us absorb the idea that success has to look exhausting to count. More visibility. At some point, you have to ask whether the life you’re building still fits the person you’ve become. 1 Practical Takeaway Don’t wait for the golf club moment. → Pay attention to what gives you energy and what consistently takes it away Because clarity rarely arrives all at once. It usually shows up slowly and subtly. In resistance. I don’t have all the answers yet. I’m still in the question. But I know this much: I’d rather write my next chapter… than have it written for me. 1 Dose of Art A little whimsy. A little joy. A little doodle.
Doodle by “Chatty” my AI artist. Know someone who needs a Dose? Forward this – or introduce us! I know this is a “mass email,” but I genuinely love hearing from people. Reply, book a Zoom, pick up the phone. I’d love to catch up. Thanks for letting me show up in your inbox. More joy. Less friction. Always. |