You’d think that by the time you’re running a business, sitting on a board, or speaking on global stages, you’d feel successful. However, so many of my clients feel just the opposite! When you aren’t happy with yourself, then success is impossible. Success can only truly be measured by you, your values, and your sense of worth.

We hear it all the time ‘It’s lonely at the top.’ In fact it’s a topic in my new book about being happy alone, but what if it’s not actually about your leadership status, or the fact no one gets you, what if it’s about something within you that’s missing? A disconnection from yourself that followed you all the way to the top? 

You did it. You built the business, closed the deals, earned the achievements. Maybe you found a partner and had some children. Phew, you're happy! Others look at your properties, your holidays, your kids in private school, and all those fattening business lunches and they are envious. From the outside, it looks like success, but I know from my clients, on the inside it never feels enough.

Many years ago, I read that once a company gets to £100k, that the strategies you used to get there aren’t suitable to push you up further. There’s a ceiling of skills. It’s a tough pill to swallow. All the great stuff I did, won’t work anymore!  So, you know that part of you that got sh*t done? The version of you that could take anything life threw at them, the pressure, the deadlines, the chaos, and just get on with it? Well, it does have a ceiling, unfortunately

We grew up with the idea that legacy is something you build by creating a ‘thing’. Work hard, create a unique product that goes viral. All the sacrifices are worth it if you just make a name for yourself. I’ve been reflecting on this recently as I’ve been rewriting my will and with that, having to think about what happens to my business when I die.

A client said to me recently how she’d heard the quote, ‘you write the book you need’ and how she had turned to her friend and said, ‘that’s Mari.’ In some respects she was right, and wrong about the book I’ve written – ‘It begins with you.’ I wrote the book I had needed way back when I began my journey. However, the new book I’m writing is a book I needed decades ago and yet, like the quote, it is the book I still need in some contexts and, as I’m now hearing, the one you may need.