Anxiety is not random or a sign something is wrong with you. It is your brain using patterns from past experiences to try to protect you, even when those patterns no longer make sense in your current life.

Leaders are increasingly expected to take on responsibilities they are not trained for, including managing trauma. Understanding the limits of leadership and where professional support is needed is critical for both performance and wellbeing.

Feeling stuck is not a lack of ability, it’s often the brain trying to protect you from perceived risk. For high performers, this can quietly limit decisions, confidence and future growth.

Fear and anxiety are not always logical, but the brain treats them as real threats. Even when you know something isn’t dangerous, your body can respond as if it is, affecting how you think, feel and behave.

‘Make it so number one’ spoken by Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise, is a phrase captured in my head, having heard Picard say it thousands of times. My mother didn’t have great mental health, but she had good taste in TV.

Being ‘taught at home’ (I use speech marks because I never really was) meant that I got my education from TV, copious amounts of books, and random visits to churches, floods, and whatever else took my mother’s fancy each day. Unfortunately, this meant that I didn’t know what the English flag was by the age of 23, but I do now, and it never really held me back.

Male confidence and identity are shifting in ways that aren’t always openly discussed. Many men, including those in leadership roles, are struggling to express themselves and understand where they fit, often holding back out of fear of getting it wrong.

In Spiderman: Homecoming, Peter Parker says, “I’m nothing without the suit,” and Tony Stark replies, “Then you shouldn’t be wearing it.” It’s a line that stays with you, because many leaders question the same thing. Impostor syndrome rarely comes from lack of ability, it comes from relying on the role, the title or the ‘suit’ rather than feeling certain in who you are underneath it.