The Red Lights We Invent For Ourselves
A conversation about reinvention, impatience, and giving yourself more time than you think you need
In today's reflection, I want to talk about the obstacles that aren't real. The ones we build ourselves and then treat as if someone else put them there.
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.
What stayed with me
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.
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.
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!
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