It’s the difference you make that counts
On breaking habits and being a healthy high-achiever
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The past ten weeks have been a fun whirlwind! I’ve been working intensively with a group of early-stage entrepreneurs, propelling ideas into business plans and developing long-view mindsets, habits, and practices that will help them stay the course. Working with them has inspired me to create and serve them fully, and the transformation has been powerful.
The program's start coincided with my first two months back from India, during which I adopted an Ayurvedic diet and corresponding exercise routine. I’m down a size and in optimal health. These activities are part of my 2024 commitment to being a healthy high achiever as my businesses kick into high gear.
In my experience, when you lead others through transformation, you end up going through one yourself. This experience was no different.
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I started my entrepreneurial journey after unintentionally leaving my fast-paced corporate job in London in 2020. I was just barely keeping burnout at bay when my 70-year-old mom died in a car crash in late 2019. A few weeks later, I found myself unable to get out of bed for the first time in my life; unresolved trauma coincided with burnout, and I soon went out on mental health leave and never returned to work.
I’ve spent the last four years recovering, building new mindsets and approaches to life, redefining my ambitions and definitions of success, and building two businesses (first one and then the other). Along the way, I earned a degree in Wine & Gastronomy from Le Cordon Bleu London (a life goal completed!), launched this Substack, became a LinkedIn Top Voice on the Future of Life & Work, and moved to Provence. (I’ve written a bit about my journey here.)
My journey has been an eye-opening experience of what life and work can be like if you create them with deep intention, take the roads less travelled, and take the long view.
On healthy high achievement
So, my challenge this year is to bring everything I’ve learned together and focus on building sustainable health and wealth, a.k.a. healthy high achievement while I grow both of my businesses.
And, by wealth, I mean being wealthy, not rich. As Timothy Ferris talks about in The Four-Hour Workweek, for me ‘wealthy’ is about more than just money, it’s about having control over your time and lifestyle.
In preparation, before the end of 2023, I adopted a range of new habits to support me in kicking into high gear.
I adopted a new way of eating (and cooking!) inspired by my trip to India, which feels natural and easy to sustain. I also gave up drinking (yes, a wine expert who no longer drinks wine except on a few rare occasions!)
I built a daily yoga and meditation practice and bought a workout machine that I use for resistance training several times a week–my yoga platform is now fully kitted out!
I reinforced my daily journaling and weekly writing habits to support better writing here and working on my book proposal.
And I organised my days and weeks to optimize my energy and focus on the rest of my priorities:
engaging with clients and client work,
working ‘on’ each of the businesses,
travelling for fun and to spend time with my children and friends in other countries,
and having plenty of time to enjoy the ‘millionaire’ Provençal lifestyle.
Let’s just say that I began 2024 with serious discipline in all areas of my life and work–and I loved it!
Enter Project Opus
In late January, I launched the first cohort of Project Opus, a ten-week intensive programme for early-stage female entrepreneurs.
The name Project Opus comes from the idea that we should all take the long view on our careers, investing our efforts in challenges and causes that we’re passionate about for the long haul. I believe that building your Opus is one way you can have further agency over your work and that it’s an antidote to the uncertainty that’s now part of all of our lives (I’ve previously written about that here).
I believe that long-view living and leadership are what individuals and our world urgently need, and it turns out that this view is gaining traction at the highest levels (my next article is about this, so stay tuned).
As you might imagine, Project Opus needed my attention, just as any new initiative does. I prepared for this and had allocated time. But I did not anticipate how much I was going to LOVE working with these women! Their ideas, questions, challenges, and energy were infectious and energizing–and I was inspired to create and serve.
Now, this wasn’t just any program designed to help people create a business plan–you can get that anywhere, including off the internet. Entrepreneurship is no pie-in-the-sky activity, so this program went deep.
Preparing people to create their Opus and get their businesses ready to launch means being honest about what it takes to do this work. So we spent time on mindsets, beliefs, managing energy and time, and how to confront your self-sabotaging behaviors when they inevitably get in the way.
I encouraged and expected people to try out and adopt new habits to support them in becoming who they need and want to become to create, launch, and build the business they have in mind. This is all about figuring out what habits and practices will sustain your well-being, work ethic and the rest of your life.
Several participants told me how challenging it was to adopt new habits and stick with them; others revelled in the discipline they found within themselves.
On to the irony, then, shall we?
It’s the difference you make that counts
So, there I am, teaching, facilitating conversations, and coaching folks on building their habits and mindsets…you know where this is going now, right?
Yes, one of my essential habits began to fall apart….writing.
Forget working on the book proposal; that stopped immediately. But I even stopped publishing regularly here on Substack, and when I did, the process was challenging, and the outcome was less than ideal. And there I was running a program that was giving me lots I could have shared.
This is all to say that no system of habits is entirely immune to the challenge of life or work intervening. You might wonder why I’m sharing this when we all know that life gets in the way sometimes.
I’m sharing this because, as a coach, I see many people beating themselves up and seriously judging themselves when they “fail” at keeping all the balls in the air.
When, in reality, and to borrow a line from Tiffany Dufu and her book, Drop the Ball, “What you do is less important than the difference you make.”
In this case, I made a difference in the lives of a fantastic cohort of women, and they made a difference in mine. The synergy was real! The writing took a back seat.
I learned it’s okay to let my energy ride the wave as long as I’m honest about tradeoffs and I circle back with myself sooner rather than later. In this case, I’m now strengthening the practices that support my writing to give it the quality of attention it deserves as a critical life priority.
I’d say this is all part of becoming a healthy high-achiever.
We’ve been on this journey of Reimagining Life & Work for a while. I’d love it if you’d share your experiences in the comments below. How do you sustain your habits when life or work gets in the way? Do you just cut yourself some slack, or do you have a way to course correct before too much time passes?
