What Would Better Look Like For You?

There's something about the South Bank at night that gets me every time.

The Thames dark behind you, the brutalist concrete of the National Theatre lit up ahead, and the anticipation. What will I see tonight? Will it move me, or will I wish I’d stayed at home with Netflix. I've been coming here for years. It feels like mine in some way I can't quite explain.

Last night I went to see Summerfolk, Maxim Gorky's 1904 portrait of wealthy, successful, self-made Russians - people who had worked hard, risen from humble beginnings, and built lives they were supposed to be grateful for.

Every single one of them was miserable.

The façade

One of the characters describes how they project happiness to the world. Polish the reality. Show people they're winning. Present the version of themselves that says: look how far I've come.

I sat in the dark thinking: that's not a 1904 Russian problem. That's a this-morning-on-LinkedIn problem.

The difference is that Gorky's characters didn't have Instagram, or Facebook. They didn't have the constant pressure to perform contentment for an audience of thousands. And yet they were doing exactly the same thing - wearing the life they'd built like a costume that didn't quite fit.

What struck me was this: Gorky wrote that play 15 years before the Russian Revolution. His characters had no idea that their world was about to be dismantled completely. Everything they'd held onto - the status, the property, the identity that came with their success - would soon be swept away in ways they couldn't have imagined.

They were so busy being unhappy in the present that they couldn't see what was coming.

Where I come from

I'll be honest with you about something the LinkedIn post about this didn't say.

I come from modest stock. My dad was working class, low income, grafted hard. My parents did well to move upwards - we were what you'd call standard northern lower-middle class. Nothing dramatic. Just the kind of background where you're aware that you're not the sort of person things happen to. You're the sort of person who has to make them happen.

So when I eventually found myself with a six-figure salary, a VP title, a company car, and a diary full of global travel - I held onto it. Tightly. Because I was terrified of losing what I'd built. All of it felt precarious in a way that was hard to explain to people who'd always expected to end up there.

That fear doesn't go away when you walk away, by the way. The first year of running your own practice is genuinely hard. There's no paycheck landing on the 25th. No safety net with a corporate logo on it. Some months are tight in a way that would have horrified my former self.

But here's what I've learned to separate: the fear of losing what you have, and the question of whether what you have is actually what you want.

Those are two very different conversations.

Running away vs. moving towards

In the work I do with senior leaders, I notice a pattern. Most people who are stuck aren't stuck because they lack options. They're stuck because they've framed the decision as an escape rather than a destination.

I need to get out of this job. I need to get away from this organisation. I need to stop feeling like this.

All of that is understandable. But running away from something bad and moving towards something better are fundamentally different psychological experiences - and they produce fundamentally different results.

When I work with someone who's feeling trapped, the question I keep coming back to isn't "what do you want to leave?" It's "what do you actually want for yourself?" What does the life you'd genuinely love look like? Not the escape fantasy. The real thing.

That shift - from away from to towards - changes everything. It turns a reactive decision into an intentional one. It gives you something to build, rather than just something to flee.

The women of Gorky's Summerfolk were capable of so much more than their circumstances allowed. But most of them couldn't see past the life they were already living - the one that looked successful from the outside and felt hollow from within.

You can make a change

If you're reading this and recognising something in yourself - the mortgage, the school fees, the people relying on you, the version of success that doesn't quite fit anymore - I'm not going to tell you it's simple.

It isn't. The uncertainty is real. The financial squeeze is real. The fear of losing what you worked for is real, and if you come from a background where you had to fight for every rung of the ladder, it's even harder to let go of the one you're standing on.

But I came away from that theatre feeling something I feel every time I do this work well.

The question that changes things isn't "how do I get out?"

It's "what would better look like for me?"

If you're sitting with that question and you'd like to think it through with someone who's been there - message me. That's exactly the conversation I'm here for.