I met Anat Weissman back in 2018, in one of my previous roles in marketing. Tel Aviv, Düsseldorf, our paths kept crossing. Even then, she was the person who connected people and departments that would never have found each other. This week, I got to sit down with her and hear the whole story.

Meet Anat

Anat grew up between Israel and Kenya, a third culture kid. She spent more than 25 years in customer-facing roles, from sales enablement to customer success. She was laid off twice. The first time, she was sad for 24 hours. The second time, she decided it was her time.

For two years she carried an idea for a product in her head, waiting for funding, an engineer, a team. Then she took a short workshop, started working with AI agents, and launched CXmate in under three weeks. Without writing a single line of code.

Today she is a founder, a coach and a speaker. And she no longer introduces herself by her title. She says: I connect the dots.

🎤 Join Anat live: her talk The Human is the Loop is online, in English, on November 5, 2026. I’ll be there too. Link here

What stayed with me

1. The missing piece is rarely money or skills. It’s starting. Anat had every excuse ready for two years. What changed was not her resources. It was her decision to begin and figure it out on the way.

2. If AI scares you, start with your life, not your work. Anat built an app in one hour so her family could follow her daughter’s schedule while she traveled. Small, personal wins make the fear smaller.

3. Say yes, even when it’s uncomfortable. Her AI agent created a landing page for a talk she hadn’t planned to give. Her first reflex was no. Two minutes later she said yes. Fifty people came.

My reflections

Anat is truly brilliant, and so generous to open up and talk about her journey. She is also transparent about her struggles, and I love that about her.

Before we hit record, we talked about how she never felt appreciated in any workplace. They kept trying to box her in. But Anat cannot be boxed, because she brings so much to the table. She knows clearly what she brings. She knows herself. And now she finally feels at home in everything she does, with so much more time for herself.

I loved what she said, because I feel it too: AI gives us back the time to be ourselves, and to spend it the way we want.

I understand that most people don’t use AI to the capability it has today. The only thing in between is the fear of change, and of adopting the new times we are heading into. In some parts of the world, this has been happening for a long time. It is coming to Europe as well. And it’s better to start playing with AI now than to wait until... until you feel ready.

This is what we keep doing, isn’t it? I have been there. Some of you are there now. Waiting is the most dangerous way of postponing the moment you act on your idea.

But I understand where it comes from. It comes from the fear of failure, because society taught us to show only the glamorous side of our lives. That has never been realistic, and it will collapse faster than anyone can say abracadabra.

I truly believe we all have our own way of adopting new technology. And I get it. Take your time and find your own rhythm. That’s why I bring these guests to you, so that every Thursday you get your dose of inspiration and find your own rhythm.

What I learned from Anat: if you have been sitting on a genius idea for a new business or product, or you simply want to start, stop procrastinating. Start! You will see along the way whether it’s working or not. You don’t have to have it all figured out from the beginning. Move, and figure it out on the way. And if it doesn’t work, that is a lesson to change direction and try something else.

I loved the light in her eyes when she talked about her company, but also about the other sides of her life. She gave herself permission to just be herself, with the amazing days and the not so amazing ones. She has embraced herself entirely, and now she flows with her life instead of resisting it. Instead of fighting how her brain works, she works with it.

It reminded me of how many years I spent fighting myself, trying to fit the neurotypical brain. But I have never been that way. My brain has always been wired differently, and that is okay. Because, you see, I bring you a different perspective, one you might not see without my input.

So maybe my lesson from Anat is this: embrace variety and diversity. When we come together at the table with different perspectives, curious about why you see the world the way you do and why I see it differently, that is where the best ideas are born. And most importantly, that is where we bond.

Let’s leave the workload to AI, and keep the critical thinking and the reins in our hands.

🎤 Want more of Anat? Join her talk The Human is the Loop, live online on November 5 → link here

Find Anat: Website · CXmate · LinkedIn

A question for you

• If someone took your title away tomorrow, how would you introduce yourself?

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

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Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,
Cris

A few months ago, a post on LinkedIn stopped me. A Romanian woman was writing about why she left Norway after twelve years. It had gone viral, and the comments kept coming. I wanted to leave one too. Then I thought, no. Let me write to her directly.

Her name is Cristina Parvulescu.

Meet Cristina

Cristina moved to Norway at 24 for an internship. She stayed twelve years and built a career in sustainability, food systems and social impact.

Then it all fell apart at once. She lost her job. She lost her relationship. Her family was far away. She applied for jobs and nothing happened.

At a wedding, a heavily pregnant friend told her she didn’t have the support she needed to give birth the way she wanted. That was the first click. Cristina trained with Mayan midwives in Guatemala and studied at a gentle birth clinic in Bali.

Last year she took her leap of faith and moved home to Sibiu, Romania. Today she is a doula, birth educator, massage therapist and yoga teacher. She goes to new mothers’ homes, cooks for them, and helps their bodies recover. The way the village used to.

What stayed with me

1. Start with what you still have. Alone, without a job, in a foreign country, Cristina asked herself one question: what do I have? A roof over her head. Her skills. Her family. Her health. It's so easy to lose sight of what we have when everything hurts. She built from there, one small thing at a time.

2. When nothing happens for you, give. Mind, body, nature, community. That was her way through. And when nothing was moving, she volunteered, organized events for women, joined women’s circles. “If nothing happens for you, then focus on giving.” Most of us have time in transition seasons. We can give it, and gain a community.

3. Suffering is not normal. Her message to every woman: you deserve care as much as you give. So many new mothers say "I don't need anything" while they slowly isolate themselves. And if you want to help a friend who just had a baby, Cristina's advice is simple: leave a pot of home-cooked food at her door.

My reflections

Listening to Cristina, I thought about how similar our stories are, and how different.

Cristina said she always wanted to go back. So she is back. When I left Romania, I never said I would go back. I left it open. So I am still here.

Do you see how we construct our own realities? She is back home, while I am still in another country. But I do feel at home.

We definitely share the gratitude practice that gives us peace every day.

When life took away a long relationship I thought I would be in forever, and then a job, I found myself without my family, in a foreign country, with nowhere to go to work or to socialise. In my mid 40s, when most of my close friends either have families with kids or are busy working full time and long days.

I found time and space. I had all the time in the world to think about my entire life. To reflect, and to decide to flip the script.

I could have gone numbing myself with alcohol, with extreme sports, with cigarettes, with dating. But I looked at the people doing it, and I didn’t like what I saw. So I decided to go the other way. A way that was not populated, and start building a new road. One in which I went inwards and stripped away all the expectations society and everyone had of who I should be by that age: 45.

Here is my takeaway so far: to be at peace in your own body and mind, to find home in yourself, you have to mute the noise, take time for yourself, and listen to what your soul wants.

I know that is difficult to do when the life you built is busy and doesn’t allow you any time for yourself. But I urge you to find at least one hour for yourself each week, to connect with yourself.

All the answers you are looking for outside of yourself, by asking people, watching podcasts, or looking for inspiration... None of it is wrong. But you won’t find your answers there. Your answers are within yourself. And you find them in that hour, when you give yourself permission to stay still and listen to what you want.

A question for you

• When did you last let someone help you? And what do you still have today that you stopped noticing?

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Share

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

More than a year ago, I was scrolling LinkedIn when I noticed that Constantin Gonzalez Schmitz, a former podcast guest, had liked a post by . So I stopped scrolling and started reading. I’ve followed his work ever since. While I was finishing my book, he was finishing his. When I finally read it, I felt seen.

Adrian was only my second guest ever, and I felt intimidated. So the first recording never made it out. I waited until I was ready. This week, we sat down again. It was worth the wait.

Meet Adrian

Adrian Hornsby spent nearly ten years at AWS, rising from Solutions Architect to Principal Engineer. The kind of career that looks perfect from the outside.

Then he left. Not with a big leap, but with what he calls a measured bet: one year of savings, the right conditions, and a seed that had been growing for a long time.

Today he runs Resilium Labs from Helsinki, helping organisations understand why the same failures keep happening. He also wrote the book Why We Still Suck at Resilience, and he is already working on edition two.

What Stayed With Me

1. Drift happens quietly. An outage on a weekend. You help, once. Then again. Slowly it becomes normal, for you and for everyone around you. “If a company would hire you and say, we’ll call you every weekend for the rest of your life, you would never accept the job.” Nobody chooses the burnout. We get there one reasonable yes at a time.

2. You don’t need to know yourself to give yourself permission to change. “Maybe I don’t know myself, but I know how to give myself permission to change.” Adrian says he was most miserable when he didn’t let himself change as fast as he was changing inside. The people around us often want us to stay the same. Changing anyway, and doing it consciously, is the work.

3. Sometimes people just need a hug. When I told him about people who feel stuck and don’t know what they like, he didn’t give advice. “I’m not always in favor of putting pressure on people to change. Sometimes they just need a hug, and I think that’s enough.” Support to be where they are. Not a push to be somewhere else.

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My Reflections

It took me a while to decide what Adrian left me with. Because I learned a lot from him.

We had a very nice time together. We both laughed a lot. Our conversation was flowing, and also drifting from one topic to another.

And here is what I mean by that. We were both open to receive and to give. We both came with an open mind, to listen and to be present in the conversation. That is a beautiful thing in today’s world. Although it happened online, through a screen, I still felt the connection between us, from human to human, exchanging ideas and shaping new ones together. We agreed to disagree a few times. But that is the beauty of an evolving conversation.

What I learned from Adrian is that we are all a work in progress, and it is a never-ending process. Just like resilience, in organisations but also in our day to day lives. We bring our best self in that moment. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we make mistakes. Some mistakes can be addressed and corrected, and the situation improves. Others do bigger damage, because nothing improved after the first incident, and it kept going.

I can imagine an analogy in our day to day lives. Imagine a couple who slowly stop talking to each other about how they feel. They don’t work on how they communicate, and they drift apart, until they become two strangers.

And the funny part is that the secret is in the small things. Small gestures every day that add up. Saying sorry when you did something wrong, and meaning it. Correcting course before the boat sinks.

Don’t let the boat sink. Get your hands on the wheel. Be the driver of your own life. Take ownership of your choices daily: what you eat, how you talk to others, how you show up, where you can make a difference and where you can improve. Don’t expect everyone else to change so that you can change too. Start with yourself, and you will see the reflection in the people around you.

We are humans. We will have bad days, and sometimes we can be jerks. All of us. What matters is to say sorry when we are, mean it, and be better the next day. Reflect more. Appreciate what you have. Be grateful, and life becomes more enjoyable.

Let’s all start looking at our own grass, instead of thinking the neighbours have it better.

A question for you

• Where in your life is it time to put your hands back on the wheel?

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one, Cris

This week’s story is special to me. I’ve been getting to know Simona for a few months now, while we worked together on her marketing strategy. I watched her show up online, unsure and doing it anyway.

Meet Simona

Simona Andriuta grew up in Eastern Europe and built her first career in Canada, as a primary school teacher in Montreal. She was about to get tenure when life sent her back to Europe.

Back in Europe she became a stay-at-home mom and kept learning. Business management. Interior design. Social media. Then one wedding planning class woke up a childhood dream. As a little girl, she didn’t only dream about her own wedding. She dreamed about her parents’ wedding, because they never had one.

After 40, she started her own business. Today she runs Lemon & Hazel, planning weddings in France for couples from around the world, in four languages.

What stayed with me

1. Grief comes before reinvention. "I felt as if all my dreams were crumbling." Simona didn't skip that part. Before something new can begin, we are allowed to feel the loss of what ended.

2. Nothing you learn is wasted. Eleven business courses. Interior design. Social media. For years it may have looked like wandering. In the end, it all came together in one job that needs both an eye for beauty and a head for logistics.

3. Choosing the hard way is a way of trusting yourself. She could have joined an agency and started small. She chose to build her own business, because, in her words, she can "bring something specific, something extra." From the outside it may look like stubbornness. It is knowing what you bring.

My reflections

Simona’s story of true resilience, and of never giving up on her dreams, reminded me of myself. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing my own dreams. Like my dream of getting married in a very specific way.

I guess you can call it rebellious. Not because I want to be against the script, but because I want to do it my way. Because we are allowed to be different and not follow the same pattern.

I don’t like most of the weddings I have seen. The couple who should enjoy the wedding the most are the most stressed. And they don’t even like most of their own wedding, because they chose the music, the location and the outfits to satisfy everyone else.

Simona’s beautiful story of reinvention reminded me how much more fulfilled you feel, deep down, when you stay persistent on your path and with your dreams. Maybe the world doesn’t get you. Maybe you look like a crazy, stubborn person for a while. But you respect yourself, because you have the guts to honour your dreams.

I believe we should learn more from Simona’s resistance to the script. She wanted it differently because she knows what she brings to the table. And that is something we should celebrate!

A question for you

• What is the dream you put away because you thought it was too late?

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Share

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

I had just arrived at the hostel. My first time ever staying in one, at 46. It was afternoon and I was in the room when a young woman walked in from one of her hikes. She had a beautiful presence. She looked at me with her blue eyes and I knew we had a connection.

We went for coffee that same afternoon. A few minutes into the conversation, I knew I wanted to invite her to the podcast. A week later, after my yoga retreat ended, we hiked a trail together.

Her name is Alexandra Belousova. Short Alex. She is an expedition guide in Antarctica and the Arctic.

Meet Alex

Alex grew up shy, in a family of seafarers. Her father worked in the polar regions for more than twenty years. When she was a child, he showed her photos of polar bears, penguins and whales. She thought they looked like Photoshop. Too beautiful to be real.

She never dared to dream that big. She imagined a settled life: a job, a husband, children. She wanted to study languages, but her scores and the cost pointed her to marketing. She felt out of place from the first day.

Then one afternoon her father picked her up from university and asked what was wrong. The next day she was sitting in front of his former boss. A few minutes later she signed a contract to work as a stewardess on an expedition ship to the Arctic. She was 21.

Ten years later, she guides expeditions in Antarctica and the Arctic. And she is heading to the Amazon for the first time.

When I asked her what it means to catch more green lights in life, she said: store the light within, and reflect it.

What Stayed With Me

1. "I feel like I have the life of another person." That is what she told her father that day. She did not have a plan. She had a feeling she could not ignore anymore: this life is not mine. So many of us feel that and keep going anyway. Knowing yourself often starts right there. Not with an answer. With an honest admission.

2. Say yes, then let the path teach you. She signed that contract in minutes, with zero understanding of the job. Then she spent five years cleaning cabins, doing laundry, and watching the guides. How they spoke. What they knew. How they cared for people. The yes opened the door. The years of paying attention built the life.

3. The side door is still a door. Silence. The third time, one reply came: a café needed a barista. She took it. She made coffee for the guides she wanted to become, and she was hard on herself. But that café was her ticket in. While serving coffee she took a guiding course, and a local company offered her a guiding job.

My Reflections

What I learned from Alex: all our pains, dreams and fears are the same, regardless of our status, the title we have, or the amount of money in our account. Everyone’s definition of success is different, and that is okay.

I don’t want what so many people have. I don’t want their mortgage, their stress levels, or their hunger to run after more money. I am building a different definition of success. One in which I am free to choose whether I stay or go, in a romantic relationship or in a job that doesn’t fit me any longer. One in which I allow myself to keep growing every day, without the need to justify who I am becoming.

Alex told me she needed to break free from her mother’s control, from parents who wanted her to follow the conventional script. She couldn’t stand that. It made me think of how I hated the conventional script all my life, and how hard I fought not to follow it. Maybe I gave myself the permission to live my own life because I saw what a system like communism does to people. It forces them to live a life they didn’t plan and don’t want.

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A question for you

• When did you last feel you were living someone else's life? And what would one small yes look like this week?

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Share

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

At the end of August, I was in Ponta Delgada, on São Miguel in the Azores. One morning I decided to join a free walking tour. My very first one, ever.

Two hours later I knew two things. I knew a lot more about the history of that city. And I knew I had to invite our guide to the podcast.

Her name is Tina. She said yes. Of course she did.

Meet Tina

Tina was adopted as a baby in 1963. For fifty-nine years, where she came from was a sealed secret. She was raised by a Portuguese father in Lowell, Massachusetts, in a community full of Azorean families. She grew up hearing about the Azores her whole life.

In her twenties she was a single mother. She heard on the news that nobody would take care of her in retirement, so she started saving. And never stopped.

She became a nurse case manager. At 47, still working full time at the hospital, she started law school at night. She passed the bar at 50. Then she quit her job to walk the Camino de Santiago, 800 kilometers, without a word of Spanish.

About eleven years ago, four people close to her died within a short time. She took it as a message. Stop saying someday. So she and her husband made a plan.

She retired at 60. They bought a house on São Miguel they had only seen online. Six weeks after landing on the island, she was leading walking tours. In a country whose language she didn’t speak.

Today she guides visitors through Ponta Delgada, runs a crochet club that makes blankets and hats for neighbors in need, and laughs more than almost anyone I know.

If you ever visit São Miguel, book her tour here ( and here is her Instagram account @tinastoursbeyondthegatespdl GuruWalk). You will not regret it. And here is her Instagram account.

What Stayed With Me

1. Write your own. When Tina asked the guide she was about to cover for if she could have his notes, he told her: write your own. She asked again. Same answer. A third time. Write your own.

   So she went home and spent three weeks writing a ten-page script about the history of a country she had just moved to. And she’s glad he said no. Because now it’s hers.

   Nobody is going to hand you the script for your next chapter. Sometimes that’s the best thing that can happen to you.

2. It's not luck at all. People tell Tina she’s so lucky. She tells them: we’ve had horrible things happen to us. It’s not luck.

   It’s decades of quiet saving. It’s a plan that took years. It’s a mindset she describes like one of the stone walls on São Miguel. The universe will put a wall in front of you. Your job is to go under it, over it, around it, or through it. But you get through.

   What looks like luck from the outside is usually a decision someone kept making for a very long time.

3. Catch the yellow and red lights too. I ask every guest what it means to catch more green lights in life. Tina’s answer made me laugh out loud.

   Green lights are easy, she said. Everybody goes on green. The interesting part is the yellow and the red. Every problem has a solution. If you don’t know the answer, someone else does. And if it goes wrong? “Nobody died. Nobody has cancer. Nobody’s pregnant.” Just keep going.

My Reflections

This is a beautiful story of someone who spent fifty-nine years not knowing where she came from, and still decided to write her own script and give herself permission to live a full life.

She hasn’t had an easy life, and she is not wealthy. She said it four times in our conversation. It’s worth sitting with, because I believe so many of us carry an identity like that, created a long time ago, unconsciously.

So here is what I have been sitting with: we decide who we want to become, at any stage in life. If you believe your life is over at 50, and this is your life (one in which you suffer, or you’re not happy, and you’re afraid to fight for more), then this is the life you are going to have.

We are the creators of our own minds. We create it first in our minds, and then the prophecy happens. It is not random. It is what you believe you can have. Or worse, what you believe you deserve.

I do believe each and every one of us deserves only the best.

Please keep dreaming of a better life. Pick up a book if your imagination is not rich. Try to travel to new places. Try new experiences. They don’t need to be big or expensive or cinematic. They can be yours. Go try a completely new hobby, even just a few times. Take a new course online, so many are free today. Get out of your comfort zone, whatever that is.

Look at Tina. What a beautiful life she has eventually built for herself.

A question for you

• What story are you still telling yourself about what you deserve?

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Share

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

We’re told to get more confident first, and then we’ll finally do the thing. But confidence isn’t the thing you’re missing. It’s a symptom. What you’re actually missing is the skill underneath it: self-trust.

This week's episode is a solo one. No guest, just me and a question I get asked constantly: why do I look so young, and where does my energy come from. The honest answer starts on January 1st, 2013, the day I quit smoking and replaced it with the gym. That one small kept promise is still shaping who I am almost 15 years later, and it's the whole reason I wanted to record this.

1. Self trust is a firm, internal reliance on your own integrity, judgment, and capabilities, regardless of outcome. It’s the foundation confidence is built on top of, and you cannot skip it.

2. Breaking promises to yourself destroys self trust slowly and quietly, and your confidence goes down with it. The way back isn’t a bigger promise. It’s a smaller, more honest one.

3. Start small enough that you can actually keep it. Not five gym sessions a week when you can realistically manage one. One kept promise, then another, is the entire practice.

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A question for you

• What's one promise you've been making to yourself and breaking, over and over, without even noticing? Not the big one. The small one.

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Share

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

I’m writing this from São Miguel in the Azores, Portugal, a few days before I fly home. This week’s episode came out of something that happened here: a 2:30am hike up the highest peak on the island, with a group of people who’d been strangers to me days earlier. Ten of us, nine other solo travelers and me, different ages, different countries, all reaching the summit together right as the sky opened into sunrise.

But the story isn’t really about the mountain. It’s about breakfast.

What Stayed With Me

1. Connection doesn't find you, you start it. Every morning at breakfast, I made a point of greeting whichever solo traveler was sitting alone. That one habit, repeated for days, is the entire reason ten of us ended up on a mountain together.

2. The question matters more than the greeting. Once the conversation started, the real move was asking what someone loved, not how they were. Asking a newer arrival about his favorite trail is what led us to the highest peak on the island in the first place.

3. Say yes before you feel ready. When the mountain guide in our group offered to organize the climb, plenty of us weren't physically or mentally prepared. Nobody backed out, and nobody was left behind.

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I used to believe connection was something that happened to you. You got lucky, you ended up at the right table, you met the right person by chance. Sitting on top of that mountain, watching the sky turn colors I don’t have real words for, surrounded by nine people who were strangers less than two weeks ago, I understood how wrong that belief was.

None of it happened to me. I built it, one breakfast at a time. I said good morning first. I asked a real question. I said YES to a climb.

Not everyone on that mountain became a friend, and that’s fine. That was never the goal. I’m flying home with a handful of people I’ll actually stay close to, people I’ll see again, and that is exactly how real connection works. It was never about being liked by everyone. It’s about showing up enough times that the right people stick.

A question for you

• What would happen if you said good morning to the person sitting alone tomorrow?

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,
Cris

• So, what do you do?

It is friendly. Nobody means anything by it. And for most of last year, I dreaded it.

Over a year and a half ago I lost my job. Finding another one in marketing turned out to be the hardest thing I have ever done. These are not easy times to be looking, and I want to be honest about that, because I know some of you reading this are in it right now.

So when someone at a dinner or a networking event turned to me, perfectly kindly, and asked what I do, I felt it drop. Like a bomb.

What the question actually does

It asks you for a category. And once someone has your category, the next question writes itself. Oh, you are in marketing, which company? Oh, you are a teacher, which subject?

If your category still fits you, that is fine. You answer, they follow the script, everyone is comfortable.

But if you have lost yours, or outgrown it, you have three options and all of them are bad.

You give the old answer. The job you do not have anymore. And you feel yourself doing it.

Or you tell the truth. I am looking. I am between things. I am figuring it out. And you watch their face do that small recalculation, and then comes the question you were dreading. So what is the plan? And you do not have one, because if you had a plan you would not be in the messy middle. You would be past it.

Or you give the rehearsed answer. Everybody in this situation has one. You wrote it in the car on the way there. Mine was terrible for months.

The part nobody talks about

Here is what that question costs, and I do not think most people see it.

People in the middle of a change stop going to things.

I did. There were events I should have gone to and I did not go. It was not because I was ashamed. It was because I was exhausted from performing a summary of myself that was not true yet. It is easier to stay home than to explain eleven times in one evening a life you are still building.

But those were exactly the rooms where the next thing was going to come from.

So the question does not just make people uncomfortable. It removes them. It takes the person who most needs to be around others, and it keeps them home.

That is what I mean by trapped. Every time you answer with the old label, you rehearse the old life one more time.

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Three things I would like you to take from this

1. Ask about a decision, not a category. I have been in São Miguel for two weeks and I have been meeting people every day.

   Alex is an expedition guide. She works on ships that go to the most extreme parts of the world. We walked one of the most beautiful trails on this island together, and by the end she had said yes to coming on the podcast.

   Gareth is a mountain guide. He spends his working life on mountains, and here he is on his holiday, walking up more mountains. For fun.

   If I had opened those conversations with what do you do, I would have three job titles. Guide, guide. Two labels. No people.

   Instead I asked how come they chose the Azores, and I got three lives.

   A category is something you were given. A decision is something you made. You thought about it, you probably defended it to someone, you maybe saved up for it. It is yours, and you are a little proud of it.

   Nobody has a rehearsed answer for how come you chose this. So you get the real thing.

2. When someone asks you, answer the question you wish they had asked. Someone says so what do you do, and you say: I am in the middle of changing that. Ask me what I am building.

   That is the whole sentence. Learn it, and say it proudly.

   It is honest. You are not pretending you still have the old job, and you are not handing over the version of yourself you feel worst about. And it tells the other person how to talk to you, which most of them are quietly grateful for, because they did not know either.

   The day I started saying something like that instead of apologising for not having a title was the day those conversations stopped costing me so much.

3. Choose the room. Marta was my second ever guest on this podcast. In March she invited me to her yoga retreat here. Five months later I am on an island in the middle of the Atlantic because of one conversation.

   I came for a week of yoga, but I had already decided from home that I was not leaving when it ended. So I had to figure out where to stay.

   I booked a hostel. My first one. A shared room, sleeping with strangers.

   Partly the money, I will be honest. But not only. Because I knew that if I booked a nice quiet apartment for myself, I would have a beautiful two weeks and I would speak to nobody.

   I did not hope to meet people. Hoping does not work. I put myself in a room where it was almost impossible not to.

Almost everyone here came alone, and none of them were waiting. Not for a partner, not for a group, not for a better year, not for someone to say it was okay. They looked at a map, booked the flight, and showed up.

You arrive alone, but whether you stay alone is completely up to you.

We tell ourselves that being alone means being lonely, so we do not go. And then we are alone at home, which is worse. It is the same thing as those events I skipped last year. Exactly the same.

And one more thing I did not expect. Losing that job made it the worst year I have had in a long time. But I am not sure I would be here, doing this, if it had not happened. That is not a nice thing to say to someone in the middle of it. I hated hearing it too.

A question for you

• What do you say when someone asks you what you do?

• And if you are in the middle of something right now, has that question ever kept you home?

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

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Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

This week's guest is Helene Knoll, and she is also a friend. I met her a year and a half ago in a yoga studio here in Düsseldorf, and I have been quietly admiring her ever since.

She spent most of her career as a mechanical engineer. Six years at the Max Planck Institute for Iron Research, then years running a scanning electron microscopy lab for a steel manufacturer, then technical sales. Today she is a certified nutritionist and naturopathy practitioner with her own YouTube channel and a community she guides through detox programs every year.

Two women in the same room, both a little unsure of how it would go. Helene doesn’t speak English often, and she said yes anyway. When we finished, she told me she couldn’t believe how good it felt.

Neither could I.

What stayed with me

1. The moment the story stopped adding up. Helene’s company offered a free blood analysis once a year. Her results came back with alarmingly high cholesterol, and the doctor called her in.

   When Helene walked through the door, the doctor was visibly surprised. She had been expecting a woman in her sixties, significantly overweight. Instead she got a woman in her forties who exercised three times a week.

   The doctor gave her the standard advice. Stop eating eggs. Stop eating butter.

   But Helene had already stopped eating those things, because that was what everyone said to do. So the advice didn’t just fail to help. It made no sense at all.

   That’s the moment. Not the test result. The moment where the explanation you were given doesn’t match your actual life, and you have to decide whether to accept it anyway or start looking for yourself.

   She started looking. It turned out the answer was sugar.

   A year earlier she had separated from her partner, moved into a small apartment, and gotten rid of her television. She taught herself to bake instead. Cake every day. Two slices on weekends. She had built a full sugar addiction without ever noticing it happen.

2. Quitting cold turkey didn't work. One small square did. She stopped sugar overnight and described it as withdrawing from a drug. Her body revolted.

   So she changed the approach. She bought good quality 70 percent dark chocolate and allowed herself one small piece, with one rule: she wasn’t allowed to chew it. She had to let it melt and pay full attention to the texture the entire time it took.

   She did this for over a year. Eventually the cravings simply weren’t there anymore.

   What strikes me isn’t the chocolate. It’s that she replaced restriction with attention. The thing that finally broke the addiction wasn’t willpower. It was presence.

3. Read until the first bad ingredient. Then put it back. I asked Helene for practical advice and she gave me the simplest possible version.

   Never read the front of the package. That side is marketing, always. The ninety-nine percent clean, the bio, the natural. Turn it around.

   The ingredients are listed by concentration, most first, least last. So what sits near the beginning is what you are actually buying, and what sits at the end is preservatives and colorants.

   And then the part I keep repeating to myself: read until you hit the first questionable ingredient, then stop and put it back on the shelf. You don’t need to finish the list.

   I asked about the scanning apps too, the ones where you point your phone at a barcode and get a score out of a hundred. She said no. Every app runs a different algorithm and none of them show you what’s behind the number. She has tested them against products whose labels she can read herself, and the scores didn’t match.

   Her line stayed with me. Switch on your brain and take responsibility for your own health, instead of handing that responsibility to an application.

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My reflections

There's a version of Helene's story that reads as a career change. Engineer becomes nutritionist. Non linear path, real change and the will to do the reinvention work.

Here is what I think happened. Based on what she told me in our conversation, her scientific brain refused to accept an answer that didn’t fit the evidence, and she followed that refusal all the way into a different life. The reinvention wasn’t the plan. It was the consequence. And I love such a story because reinventions are successful when they are done deliberately.

I keep thinking about how often we accept explanations simply because they came from someone with authority. The doctor said it. The label said it. The app gave it a green score. And most of the time that’s reasonable, because none of us can research everything. And we think to ourselves, who am I to question this?

Helene was 43 when she typed “modern professions” into Google and read the list one by one until she reached the word nutritionist. She was still working full time. She studied in parallel. Nothing about it was dramatic or cinematic. It was just a woman deciding she would rather understand something than be told about it.

And I have to be honest about my own week here, because sitting across from her in the same room taught me a version of the same lesson.

I have recorded every single episode of this podcast through a screen. It works. There was no real reason to change it. But being in the room with someone is different, and I only found that out because I was willing to be a beginner again at something I already know how to do.

The pauses land differently. You catch things a screen would never show you.

A question for you

• Where in your life are you accepting an answer that doesn’t quite add up, because someone with more authority than you handed it to you?

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Share

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

Almost two years ago I lost my job. What followed was not a plan. It was coaches, books, workshops, and a long list of questions I did not want to answer. I learned slowly. I learned expensively.

And then six months ago I started this podcast, and something happened that I did not expect. Every person who sat down with me had built a life that looked nothing like anyone else’s. Alina left the perfect job at thirty because a question would not leave her alone. Steve walked away from Partner at a global advisory firm. Max left Microsoft and now teaches AI from a small island in the Azores. Marina was laid off at thirty and did not panic.

Not one of their definitions of success matched another. That is the whole point of this show. There is no single way to live a fulfilled life. There are dozens.

But underneath all those different lives, the same few things kept showing up. Over and over. My brain loves patterns, and it could not stop noticing this one.

So this week’s episode is just me, and ten lessons.

1. You cannot control the macro world, but you can prepare yourself for it.

2. Complaining does not help. Your brain believes what you tell it.

3. Write down three small good things every day.

4. Clarity comes from moving, not thinking.

5. Your sensitivity is not the problem. It is the advantage.

6. The people around you decide who you become.

7. Consistency beats intensity.

8. You are allowed to disappoint people.

9. Be present.

10. Stay open, take one action, then look up in a year.

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Three that cost me the most

Rewrite these three in your own words. This is the section that will read as yours or not.

1. Clarity comes from moving, not thinking. This one was hard for me, because I like to think. I can sit and think all day. And thinking felt productive, which is what made it so easy to keep doing. But clarity is not the thing you need before you move. Clarity is what moving gives you. What kept me on the couch was never a lack of information. It was fear, wearing the costume of preparation.

2. The people around you decide who you become. It took me decades to really understand this one. Not the surface of it, the bottom of it. Look honestly at who you spend your time with. Are they finding solutions, or are they narrating the problem? Are they chasing something, or are they talking about other people so they do not have to look at their own life? Not everyone is in your life for the rest of your life. You already know what you need to do.

3. You are allowed to disappoint people. Not everyone is here to like you. You do not like everyone either, and that is fine. People grow in different directions, and sometimes a break between two people is the kind thing. I have also had relationships come back years later, once both of us had moved the same way. Let go of the need to be liked by everyone and you will sleep like a baby.

Also worth rewriting. This is the part readers come for.

A year ago, if you had told me I would be running a podcast, sitting across from people whose stories I now carry around with me, and writing my second book, I would have said that is impossible.

I did not plan any of it. I did not have a five year plan. I did not have a three year plan. What I had was a direction and the willingness to notice what was already in front of me.

That is the thing nobody tells you about losing a job, or a relationship, or a version of yourself. The opportunities are not in the future, waiting for you to become ready. They are in the present, and they are usually smaller than you expect, and you will walk straight past them if you are living in your head.

I am still learning all ten of these. I have not graduated from any of them. But I did not want you to pay what I paid to find them.

A question for you

• Which one of the ten do you need today? Not the one that sounds most impressive. The one that made you slightly uncomfortable.

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Share

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

My guest this week is Marina Krasochka. She is a Co-Active coach working between Hamburg and Luxembourg, helping expats who have lost their sense of self in a new country find their way back to it. Before that she spent about a decade in global tech recruiting, at Google, at Meta, hiring across continents. She grew up in Kyiv.

She is 34. And she has already reinvented herself more times than most people do in a lifetime.

I found her on LinkedIn. Steve, one of my past guests, had liked one of her posts, and something in her very first sentence made me stop scrolling. By the time I reached the end of it I knew she belonged in our reinvention stories.

What I did not know until we finished recording was that this was her first podcast, ever. She thanked me at the end and told me she had loved the experience. I have been sitting with how much that meant to me since.

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What stayed with me

1. Fear does not go away. That is actually the point. Marina said something that reorganised how I think about this. Fear disappears when you are back in the comfort zone, when everything around you is familiar and known. So the moment fear shows up, it is not a warning that you have made a mistake. It is evidence that you have moved.

   She is rational about it. Fear is a physical process designed to keep you alive. It is doing its job. Your job is to act anyway.

2. You do not have to leave everything behind to try. This was the one I most needed to hear on behalf of everyone reading this who has children, a mortgage, a partner who depends on the income.

   Marina had unusual freedom when she started. Severance pay, no partner at the time, parents who told her they would be fine without her support for a while. She knows that. And she was clear that the version of her story with the plane ticket is not the only version available.

   Take a small project. A pet project. Do it after work. Do not wait until the kids are at university.

3. Never put yourself in a time frame. When she was laid off she had severance plus a year of unemployment benefit, and she decided she would rebuild her entire life in that year and be earning what she earned before by the end of it.

   It did not happen in a year. It has taken more than two, and she is still building.

   Her advice: talk to people who have walked the path and ask them how long it actually took. Some did it in one year. Some took ten. The deadline you set for yourself is invented, and the only thing it reliably produces is the feeling that you are failing.

My reflections

There was a moment in our conversation where we both went quiet, because we realised how closely our stories rhyme. She flew to Indonesia in December 2022 after her layoff and a separation. I went to Indonesia after I lost my job too. She went to Bali. I chose Lombok, because I wanted to learn to surf. Different islands, three years apart, the same instinct.

And when I tell people here that going far away by yourself will teach you things you cannot learn at home, they say, but I could do that here. And then they never do it here. They never do it anywhere. Marina named it plainly. It is just another excuse.

But the thing I keep returning to is her answer to my signature question.

She said she does not wait for the green light. She said, and this is the part that got me, that most of the red lights are ones we put up ourselves. I cannot move yet because my parents are unwell. I cannot start until the world is more stable. I cannot begin until I finish this course. Artificial stop signs. Invented ones.

They feel exactly like real obstacles from the inside. That is what makes them so effective. Nobody invents a red light they can see through.

And here is where it gets interesting, because Marina and I are opposites in how we get stuck. She is impatient. She wants the marathon run today, the business profitable tomorrow. She has a tattoo of a small figure taking small steps, and she got it to remind herself that nothing worth having arrives overnight. I have spent a lot of my life being patient. I can wait decades for something.

She had to learn to slow down. I had to learn to move.

Same trap, opposite doors. Her red light says not yet, it should already be finished. Mine says not yet, there is still time. Both sound reasonable. Both are stop signs I built myself.

Maybe that is the actual lesson. Not speed, not patience, but knowing which one is your particular way of standing still.

A question for you

• What is the red light you have put up for yourself?

Not the real obstacles. The invented ones. The sentence that starts with “I can’t yet, because.”

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Share

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,
Cris

I met Simon Platts in 2023, at the Blue Earth Summit in Bristol. The company I worked for at the time sent me there to represent them. He was on stage. I have followed what he does ever since.

I want to say something about that event before I get to Simon, because I have been thinking about it all week.

I walked into a room full of people who had poured their souls into making a positive impact. Outdoor lovers. Runners, surfers, climbers, people who spend their lives outside and have therefore watched what is happening to the outside. Nobody there was performing concern. They were talking about what each one of us can actually do, and then going and doing it.

I am grateful to Simon for the conversation we just had. I am also grateful to the company I worked for then, because they trusted me to go and represent them, and that trust is the only reason I was in that room at all. You never know which door someone opens for you is the one that matters.

Now to Simon.

He spent 40 years inside fashion and textiles. He started on a shop floor at Next in 1985 and stayed nearly 20 years. Then almost 10 at ASOS, leading responsible sourcing and ESG. In 2023 he left.

I went into our conversation expecting a story about the industry. What I got was a story about us.

What stayed with me

1. Blame is the wrong question. In almost every conversation about fashion, someone asks who is at fault. The brands. The factories. The shareholders. The shopper who bought the five euro t-shirt. We pass it around the table until it lands somewhere far enough away from ourselves.

   Simon does not play that game. He is blunt about what the industry has to fix, and after four decades inside it he has earned the right to be blunt. He said the onus is on the industry, and he meant it. But he also refuses to let the rest of us stand outside a thing we are already standing inside.

   We are all part of this. Not equally. But all of us.

2. Progress, not perfection. This was his phrase and it is the most useful thing in the whole episode. You do not have to become a different person by Monday. You ask simple questions before you buy. Do I need this. Will I wear it. Where did it come from. Could I borrow it, or buy it second hand, or wear the one I already own.

   None of that is dramatic. That is exactly why it works. One thought. Then one decision. Then one small thing.

3. Nothing is a given. Before he left ASOS, Simon spent a night in a hospital bed. He called it a little health wobble, said all is fine now, and moved on quickly, the way people do when they do not want to make a thing heavier than it needs to be. But he told me what went through his head that night.

   Nothing’s a given. I can’t faff around for the next 20 or 30 years, however long I’m given on this planet.

   So he left. Not to retire. To do more.

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My reflections

Halfway through our conversation I stopped and corrected myself out loud. I had introduced this as a reinvention story. It is not. Simon did not start over. He took 40 years of knowing exactly what he was doing and stopped renting it to one company. That is not rebuilding. That is finally using all of it.

And I liked him. I liked his passion and his wisdom and how little interest he had in sounding impressive. It reminded me of something I keep relearning: people who share your values tend to find each other. Not because they are looking. Because they are pointed the same way.

We are living in a time when contributing is not optional any more. If we want our children and the generations after them to still have green forests and oceans and glaciers, then it has to happen in each one of our lives, today, in the ordinary decisions nobody is watching us make.

Not because the industry is off the hook. It is not.

But because waiting for someone else to fix it is just another way of waiting.

When I asked Simon my signature question, what it means to catch more green lights, he said do not wait for the big flashing obvious one. The green lights are usually small and off to the side. You will miss them if you are sitting with your eyes shut and your hands behind your back.

The question I’m leaving you with

• What is the one small thing you would change? Not the big one. The small one. The one you could do this week without telling anybody.

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Share

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,
Cris

I have done this many times. Sometimes it arrived as a single loss. Sometimes several things ended at once and I had to rebuild while still counting what was gone. And once, nothing dramatic happened at all. I simply woke up one ordinary morning and understood that the life I had carefully built no longer belonged to the person living inside it. Like a coat you loved at twenty that you keep wearing at forty because it was expensive and it used to suit you. But it isn’t yours anymore.

Different every time. And every time, the same three things pulled me back out.

The three things

#1. You let go of the people who insist they know you better than you know yourself. This is the step that costs you something, which is why most of us skip it. It doesn’t require a confrontation. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for who you’re becoming, and you certainly don’t owe them an announcement. You simply stop giving your time and your energy to the people who need you to stay who you were.

You go quiet. You step back. And it’s not about deciding someone is bad. It’s that you cannot rebuild while somebody else is still holding the old blueprint. As long as another person is allowed to define you, you’re not rebuilding at all. You’re redecorating a room someone else designed.

This was the hardest step for me. And I promise you, it works.

#2. You go looking for joy, and you stay consistent with it. The real, specific, slightly unglamorous kind of joy. If you already know what brings you joy, go and do more of it. If you've lost track, and most of us have, somewhere between the responsibilities and the years, then you experiment.

Take the class. Join the community you keep thinking about. Try the thing you always wanted to try and never had a good enough reason for. Then notice what actually lights you up, and keep it.

Confidence is built from the inside out, one repeated choice at a time.

#3. You change how you speak to yourself. Yes, wearing the clothes that make you feel like yourself helps. It’s just a very small piece of it. I talk to myself with kindness now. Especially in the moments I mess up, that’s when it counts. I am my own best friend, and if I’m not, who exactly is going to take that job?

I started small. I wrote kind, true things about myself on a piece of paper and pinned it to the board in my kitchen. Every time I walk past, I read it. And I smile every single time.

That small piece of paper taught me something bigger. There is very little I control, and I had been carrying all of it. We are living through heavy days and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But I can’t change how a conflict on the other side of the world unfolds. I can’t change how anyone votes tomorrow. That used to leave me feeling powerless, until I understood what was actually in my hands.

I can change how I speak to myself every single day. I can keep the small promises I make to myself. I can choose how I show up and what I put into the world around me.

That's what I have come to call earned confidence. You build it quietly, promise by promise, until one day you notice you've become someone whose word means something to you.

Because rebuilding is about becoming someone who finally trusts herself again.

The question I'm leaving you with

• Where are you in your own rebuild right now? And which of the three is the one you keep avoiding?

I would love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Share

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

Just buy the ticket.

It came at the very end of my conversation with Dan Holz, a photographer and filmmaker who spent two decades behind the camera before deciding, at 50, to co-found a company of his own. He was quoting a friend from many years ago. She was young, she was traveling constantly, and when he asked her how she did it, she said: You just buy the ticket. The rest falls into place.

He never forgot it. And when he said it out loud in our conversation, I realized something. That's what I've been doing my whole adult life. That's exactly what I did back in my thirties when I bought a one-way ticket out of everything familiar. And that ticket, that one small decisive act, changed my entire life.

Every amazing opportunity I've had since. Every extraordinary person I've met. Every version of myself I've grown into. All of it started with buying a ticket. Sometimes literally. Sometimes metaphorically. But always the same small, brave, uncomplicated act of choosing to go.

I plan to keep buying tickets for the rest of my life. And I want to encourage you to do the same.

Dan is a photographer and filmmaker who has spent two decades in the industry, including 8 years in-house at Osprey directing global campaigns, and years of freelance work with brands all over the world. About a year ago, he co-founded Fieldborn Creative with Cory, the friend he met climbing on a beach in Thailand in 2008. His work has taken him from Vietnam to Chiloé, from the Zion Narrows to the Colorado Plateau. He's a member of Protect Our Winters' Creative Alliance and lives with his wife and two daughters in Leavenworth, Washington. Through all of it, he never stopped listening to the quieter voice inside him that said: there's more.

What stayed with me

1. Regret is riskier than failure. Dan wrote this on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, and it stopped me scrolling. The idea that the real risk isn't leaving. The real risk is waking up ten years from now still wondering if you should have tried. Because most of us think we're being careful when we're actually being frozen. We think we're being responsible when we're actually just staying small. Regret compounds quietly, without asking permission. Failure at least tells you something.

2. You catch more green lights when you're actually out there. Dan said something I'll carry with me for a long time. When you're at home, siloed, working alone in your office and not talking to anyone, it's easy to think this is it. This is my life. But the moment you start putting yourself out there, the whole world opens up. Opportunities arise because you made yourself available to them. Green lights don't come to closed doors.

3. Just buy the ticket. We overcomplicate things. We wait for the plan to be perfect. We wait for the money, the timing, the permission. But sometimes the whole shift begins with one small, decisive act. Buy the ticket. The rest falls into place.

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My reflections

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to design a life on my own terms. Dan's story reminded me that this isn't a single dramatic decision. It's a thousand small moments of choosing yourself. It's saying yes to the trip. It's leaving the job that no longer fits. It's moving to the mountains because that's where you feel most alive. It's meeting a stranger on a beach and knowing, somehow, that this person will matter to you 15 years later.

Dan belongs to what I've been calling my "On Their Own Terms" stories. Different from the reinvention stories, where someone rebuilds after burning everything down. The people in this category kept their craft. They just changed everything about how they were doing it. Where they lived. Who they worked with. What they said yes to. What they said no to.

That distinction matters to me, and I think it will matter to you too. Because sometimes we tell ourselves that the only way to change our lives is to blow it all up. Quit the career. Sell the house. Start from zero. And that's a story we've been sold. It's dramatic. It's cinematic. It's terrifying.

But Dan's story is quieter than that. And so is mine, honestly. It's the story of someone who paid attention. Who kept adjusting the direction, one small green light at a time. Who trusted the friendships made along the way. Who noticed when something had run its course and let it go without punishing herself for outgrowing it.

Every meaningful thing that's happened to me since my thirties came from a ticket I bought. The move. The book. The podcast. The relationships. The version of me writing this letter to you right now. None of it was guaranteed. All of it required trust.

The question I’m leaving you with

• What ticket have you been talking yourself out of buying?

Sit with it. Not to answer it perfectly. Just to notice. And if the answer comes, maybe this is your sign.

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Share

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

I laughed. Not because it was funny. Because of what it revealed. He had my whole financial picture in front of him and the thing that stood out to him was that I’m alone. As if that’s the one line item that needs fixing

That moment became this week’s solo episode.

What stayed with me

1. The question “why are you single?” is rarely a question. It’s an assumption wearing a question mark — that single is the broken state and partnered is the solved one. Most people asking aren’t trying to hurt you. They were handed one picture of what a good life looks like, the same picture I was handed, and they’re checking on you with the only map they were given. Understanding that changed how I receive the question. It didn’t change my answer.

2. The world does make it harder — you’re not imagining it. Every form that asks for a plus-one. Every table set for couples. Every well-meaning question that lands like a diagnosis. If you’re single in your 30s, 40s or 50s, the weight you feel isn’t a flaw in you. It’s the design of the world around you. And you’re not broken for feeling it.

3. One true sentence ends the explaining. Mine is: I’m building myself, so that when it happens, it’s built on something solid. That usually ends the conversation — because there’s nothing left to fix.

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My reflections

A few years ago I stopped dating. Not because I gave up, but because I saw two options in front of me: keep doing what everyone does — the apps, the blaming, the timing — or stop and build the person who would actually be ready for the right thing, instead of just available for the next thing.

What I want is a partnership, not a relationship that fills a gap. Two whole people choosing each other — not one person borrowing the other’s energy because he hasn’t built his own. That takes time. It’s not supposed to be quick.

And in the episode I admit something I’ve never said publicly: there were times I told people I was with someone, just so they would stop asking. So many times. I say it without shame now, because we’ve all found our ways to quiet the noise. Maybe it’s time we stop apologizing for it instead.

A question for you

• What’s the funniest or strangest comment you’ve gotten about being single — or have you ever quieted the noise the way I did?

Hit reply and tell me. I read everything.

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

My conversation with Steve Muscat Azzopardi was the second kind. I met Steve at the end of last year, in a workshop run by my very first podcast guest, Alina. I had just self-published my first book. He was still writing his. I started following his work on LinkedIn, and when I launched this podcast, I knew: Steve had to be one of my first guests.

Meet Steve

Here is what you need to know about him. Steve spent more than 20 years in senior leadership across financial and corporate services — from Malta to Luxembourg, back to Malta, and now Luxembourg again. He made it all the way to Partner at a top-tier global advisory firm. He was, by every definition our generation was handed, successful.

And then he stepped away from all of it to become an independent leadership mentor, speaker, and author. His book, Your Leadership R.I.D.E., builds an entire leadership framework out of something you would never expect: motorbike riding. Balance. Awareness. Trust in yourself — on the road and in how you lead.

Steve's trajectory in life was nothing linear. And he did it anyway.

He has lived on the success side — the high achiever, the promotions, the nice cars (his words, not mine). And he has lived on the other side too: coming home to yourself, reevaluating your life, your personal values, your own definition of fulfilment. In our conversation he shared, honestly and so generously, what it took him to become the most authentic version of himself.

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What stayed with me

1. Life humbled him and he let it. Steve lost his wife when he was 41. He spoke about it openly, without drama, and about how therapy carried him through the hardest chapter of his life. He needed to reconsider everything: his values, what he stands for, what actually makes him happy, what makes him tick and how to regulate his own nervous system. He knows his body now. He knows when stress is beginning. He chose to live near a forest because he knows he needs nature almost daily. That level of self-knowledge is not an accident. It is work. And he did the work.

He said something in our conversation that I want every leader — and every human — to hear: people still believe you go to therapy because you are broken. You don't. Top athletes have coaches not because they are failing, but because they want to see their blind spots. The same is true for the rest of us.

2. He is not selling you a recipe. This is what sets Steve apart from so much of the leadership industry. He is not saying "I did this, so you should do it too." The whole message of Your Leadership RIDE is in the first word: your. Your journey, your career, your life — nobody else's.

The sea restores him. It might terrify you. Cycling grounds him. You might hate it. Everyone has their own unique set of skills, values, and definition of fulfilment in life and that is okay. Actually, it is more than okay. It is the whole point.

Success, Steve says, is when you achieve something you set out to do. Fulfilment is something else entirely: being in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing, with the right people, in a way that energizes you. Success is easy to define. Fulfilment is the one worth chasing.

3. Alignment came through trial and error and it still does. Steve didn't arrive at his alignment through one big decision. He arrived through many. Malta to Luxembourg. Back to Malta. Back to Luxembourg. Employed to self-employed. Corporate world to mentoring. Some of it worked. Some of it didn't. He took the lessons and course-corrected.

His philosophy on decisions is one I will carry with me: once a thought arrives — what if I stopped? what if I tried? — you are going to live with a regret either way. Do it, and you live with the messy reality. Don't do it, and you live with the romantic "what if." Steve chooses the messy reality every time. Keep moving. Keep trying new things. Keep saying yes to new opportunities — even when it's scary. Especially when it's scary.

The question I'm leaving you with

At one point in our conversation, Steve talked about values — real values, not the ones we put on LinkedIn. He described them as the things you would stand up and fight for. Literally, he said, the things you would die for.

So here is my question for you this week:

• What are your values in life? What would you absolutely stand up and fight for? Have you ever actually asked yourself that?

Not the borrowed answers. Not what sounds good. Yours.

Sit with it. Maybe on a run, maybe on a bike, maybe just with a coffee and a quiet moment. Steve would tell you the reflection is the work.

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

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P.S. His book, Your Leadership RIDE, is available in paperback on Amazon, and you can find him at stevema.eu or on LinkedIn. He also hosts his own podcast on leadership, VISOR UP.

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

I remember the feeling exactly. The floor disappearing. The quiet panic of not knowing what comes next. And underneath it all, a question I didn’t dare say out loud: what if this is it?

It wasn’t. It was the beginning.

But lately, that feeling has been finding its way back to me not through my own life this time, but through people I care about. Friends in Germany. In the US. In Romania. Good, talented people, suddenly without work. The pressure is real, and I won’t pretend it isn’t.

So this week’s episode is different. No guest. Just me, talking to one person in particular. If that person is you, this letter is yours too.

What I wish someone had told me

The first thing, and the most important: desperation will not help you. I know how that sounds when the bills are real and the inbox is silent. But when you panic, you spiral. One negative thought pulls in the next, and before long you can’t think clearly at all and you make your worst decisions from that place.

So I’ll say the counterintuitive thing. Step away from the news for a while. Let yourself enjoy the summer. You don’t need to travel anywhere. Stay on top of your expenses, keep that steady but within that, give yourself permission to actually rest before deciding what comes next. Meet a friend. Read the books you never had time for. Cook your favourite meals slowly. Sit in the sun, even when it’s too warm, which it seems to be everywhere these days.

And here is one I love: spend time around children if you can. Yours, or borrow a friend’s little one for an afternoon. Children have a way of pulling you straight back into joy. For a few moments, they take you into their world and your mind goes quiet.

That’s the part that matters most. When your mind goes quiet, it opens.

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My reflections

In that stressful, busy job, running from task to task, you didn’t have space for a single new idea. There was no room. Your best thinking had nowhere to land.

But when you rest, when you free your mind, that is exactly when the idea for your next chapter arrives. The one you could never have reached while drowning in someone else’s deadlines.

That’s not me being poetic. That’s how it worked for me. Losing my job gave me the space to finally hear what I actually wanted. The book. This podcast. This letter you’re reading right now. None of it would exist if that door hadn’t closed.

And it’s what every guest on the show keeps telling me in their own words: the opportunities are still out there. You’ll see them when you slow down enough to notice and when you know yourself well enough to recognise the right one.

This is not the end of your story. It might be the quiet space right before the best part of it.

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A question for you

If you suddenly had a few free weeks — no meetings, no deadlines — what is the one thing your mind has been too busy to hear?

Sit with that one. Hit reply and tell me if you like.

And if you know someone who lost their job recently, forward them this letter. It might arrive at exactly the right moment.

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It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

“The more you move, the more likely you are to find green lights.”

But here’s the part nobody talks about: you have to be willing to move through the amber lights first. And most of us were raised to stop at amber.

Meet Sasha

Sasha McFarlane was born in Scotland, raised across Hong Kong and the US, and spent 15 years building a career in global fashion. But somewhere along the way, she became obsessed with a different question: How does real, lasting change actually happen?

Today, she’s the founder of Future-Proof Fashion and a researcher obsessed with systems thinking, behavioral economics, and complexity science. She’s asking why the fashion industry (and every industry) is built on old patterns. And more importantly, how we move beyond them.

Our paths rhyme in ways I didn’t expect. We both came to systems thinking slowly. We both questioned the traditional pathway. We both gave ourselves permission to start over, carrying everything we learned into something new.

And we both believe the same thing: you don’t have to fit the mold to leave a mark.

What stayed with me

After listening to this conversation for the third time, here is what stayed with me:

1. The amber light strategy is how real change happens. Sasha talks about movement as the way to catch green lights. You can’t find them if you’re stationary. But here’s what most people miss: to get to green, you have to move through amber. Amber is ambiguity. It’s discomfort. It’s the unknown. It’s saying “I don’t know” in a corporate world that teaches you to always have the answer. It’s being willing to be a beginner, to be vulnerable, to move through uncertainty until something meaningful starts to take shape.

Most of us were raised to fear amber. We were taught that ambiguity equals failure. That not knowing equals weakness. That the “right” path is clear, linear, mapped out from the beginning. Sasha flipped that script. She said: Stagnation is the real red light. Movement even through discomfort is how you find what matters.

2. Vulnerability isn’t a weakness in innovation. It’s a requirement. In corporate spaces, there’s an unspoken rule: never let them see you don’t know something. Never admit you’re a beginner. Never show the cracks. It’s seen as unprofessional. As risky. But Sasha calls it differently. Vulnerability is a skill. Not a liability. A skill.

And when you look at the people who actually create real change, real innovation, real impact? They’re the ones willing to say “I don’t know” and move forward anyway. They’re the ones curious enough to ask questions that expose their own gaps. They’re the ones who can be learners, explorers, beginners even after decades of expertise.That’s not weakness. That’s the deepest kind of strength.

3. Your non-linear path is evidence you were paying attention. Near the end of our conversation, Sasha said something I’m still turning over: “Non-traditional pathways leak really exciting things.” I love that word: leak. As if all the innovation, all the real breakthroughs, all the meaningful work is happening outside the official channels. Outside the straight lines. Outside the systems that were designed decades ago for a world that no longer exists.

Her path leaked innovation. Mine leaked clarity about what actually matters. Your path whatever shape it takes is probably leaking something the world needs.

But only if you stop apologizing for it.

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My reflections

What strikes me most about Sasha’s journey is how intentional she’s become about systems thinking but how unintentional it all was at first.

She wasn’t trying to build a non-linear career. She was just following what made sense at each moment. Watching her father build supply chains. Growing up across different cultures. Questioning the “standard pathway” in the US school system. Building in fashion. Realizing the systems underneath mattered more than the products.

Each step wasn’t part of a grand plan. It was just the next honest move.

And that’s what I think we’re all missing. We’re so focused on the perfect 5-year plan, the linear trajectory, the “right” answer, that we forget: sometimes the green lights only appear when you’re willing to move without a map.

When you’re willing to move through amber.

The amber light strategy isn’t about recklessness. It’s about intelligent movement. It’s about understanding that clarity doesn’t come before you move, it comes after you’ve moved through the discomfort, asked the questions, admitted you don’t know.

It’s about being okay with becoming instead of being.

And that shift? It changes everything.

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A question or maybe three today for you

1. What’s one area of your life where you’re waiting for perfect clarity instead of moving?

2. Where are you stopped at amber, afraid to move forward until you can see the whole path?

3. What would change if you decided that moving through the uncertainty with vulnerability, curiosity, and willingness to be wrong was actually the strategy?

I’d love to hear. Reply in the comments or reach out. I’m collecting these stories.

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

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Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris

That small, almost invisible thing is the closest I’ve ever come to answering a question people keep asking me: How do you stay so positive? Where does the energy come from? How does stress not reach you?

For a long time I gave the answer everyone expects — something about mindset. And then, somewhere along the way, I stopped, because it wasn’t true.

Since my conversation with Nirish, my last guest here, I haven’t been able to let this go. Nirish is a designer. He’s spent his life noticing how the setup of a thing quietly decides how people behave inside it, long before willpower ever enters the room. And it landed on me that I’d been doing exactly that with my own days for years, without ever once calling it design.

Because here’s what I’ve come to believe: positivity is not a mindset hack. Your mindset sits on top of your health foundation — your sleep, your movement, your energy. And if that foundation is shaky, no amount of positive thinking will hold. You can’t talk yourself into energy your body doesn’t have.

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Three things I keep coming back to:

1. Mindset follows action — not the other way around. We've been sold the reverse: get your head right and the rest will follow. In my own life it's always been the opposite. I move first, and the clear head arrives after. The action is the cause, not the reward.

2. Remove the friction, and the consistency takes care of itself. The mat left out. The clothes laid ready. The meals prepped before I'm tired enough to talk myself out of them. Tiny, almost laughable changes and yet they're the difference between doing the thing and not. You're not lazy. Your setup is just working against you.

3. Consistency beats perfection, every single time. I'd rather show up small and ordinary a hundred mornings than perfectly once. The hundred ordinary mornings are what actually change a life.

Here’s the part underneath all of it, the part that matters most to me.

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When your foundation is empty, when you’re exhausted, stretched thin, running on nothing, you can’t hear yourself. You can’t tell the difference between what you truly want and what you’re simply too tired to question. The whisper goes quiet. So this isn’t really about productivity, or habits, or being more disciplined.

It’s about having enough in the tank to come home to yourself. To know who you are and what you actually want — which, as you know, is the only thing I ever really write about.

A question for you

So here’s my question for you this week: what’s one piece of friction you could remove — not to do more, but to finally have the energy left over to hear yourself?

Pick one. Roll out the mat. Lay out the clothes. Prep the meal. Remove the friction, and watch what happens (how you start catching more green lights in life).

It does not cost you anything to share. And sharing is caring!

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Until next time, gorgeous: keep moving. Keep questioning. Keep being brave enough to not fit the mold. Your non-linear path isn’t a failure. It’s evidence that you’re paying attention.

And the world needs that.

See you in the next one,

Cris