Take Control of Your Career and Life

The Quiet Moment That Changes Everything

There’s a moment in almost every leader’s life when the outside looks polished, but inside, something starts to fracture.

I can remember so many times sitting in my corner office, the skyline gleaming beyond the glass, a team of smart people counting on my direction. I had achieved what most would call success. And yet, I felt a strange hollowness underneath it all, a question I couldn’t silence: “Is this really for me?”

At the time, my obligations to so many people and possessions didn’t allow me to consider a different way.  So, the universe scripted an experience that I simply couldn’t overlook. At the height of my corporate career, I faced a moment that forced me to choose between staying silent and staying true. I walked away, not because it was easy, but because I couldn’t live inside the illusion any longer. Sometimes we choose change, and sometimes, like me, the universe decides for us.

In the years since, both in my life and in my work as an executive coach and counselor, I’ve seen that exact pattern play out again and again. High-achievers who seem in control, but feel that deep restlessness. They’re reacting to life instead of authoring it. 

And reclaiming authorship, that’s where everything begins.

 Entrepreneurs and high-achievers who are driven, capable, and respected, but inwardly restless. They’re reacting to life rather than authoring it.

And reclaiming authorship is where everything begins.

The Myth of Control

We live in a culture that worships control. We’re rewarded for how well we plan, how quickly we fix, and how much we manage. But authentic leadership, the kind that sustains, requires something counterintuitive: letting go of control to gain agency.

Control and agency are not the same. Control is fear dressed up as productivity. Agency is ownership rooted in awareness. Control keeps you in motion; agency moves you forward.

In neuroscience, there’s a concept called cognitive flexibility, the brain’s ability to shift perspectives and create new neural pathways. When we’re in control mode, our stress response narrows those pathways. We cling to what’s familiar, even when it no longer fits. But when we pause, breathe, and allow awareness to widen, the brain begins to reorganize itself around possibility rather than protection.

That’s when transformation becomes inevitable.

What Taking Control Really Means

When clients come to me at turning points, whether after a merger, a burnout episode, or a silent Sunday realization, we begin not with what they want to do next, but with whom they want to be.

Taking control of your life and career doesn’t mean tightening your grip. It means claiming authorship: saying, “This is my story, and I’m ready to write the next chapter intentionally.”

That shift sounds subtle, but it changes everything.

• You start making decisions from values, not fear.

• You prioritize relationships over reactions.

• You measure success by congruence, not comparison.

One of my clients, a CEO who had spent 20 years building a global brand, once told me, “I realized I was leading like an actor reading someone else’s script.” In our work together, he began to pause before every major decision and ask, “Does this align with the future I’m building or the past I’m protecting?”

That question became his anchor. Within months, he wasn’t just performing leadership, he was inhabiting it.

The Courage to Pause

Reclaiming authorship begins with one radical but straightforward act: the pause.

Most of us are terrified of pausing. It threatens our identity as doers. But in that stillness lies truth. The pause is where your nervous system resets. It’s where your intuition speaks.

Neurobiologically, pausing activates the prefrontal cortex, the seat of executive function, empathy, and creative insight, and calms the amygdala’s fight-flight alarm. In plain language: the pause gives your leadership back its humanity.

When I work with clients, we use structured reflection moments throughout the day, and even 60 seconds of conscious breathing before a meeting can change the entire tone of communication. That moment of self-regulation ripples outward into trust, clarity, and better outcomes.

Taking control, in this way, starts internally. You can’t lead others with clarity if you’re at war with yourself.

The Leadership of Choice

Every day offers a dozen opportunities to choose differently.

Choice is the architecture of a conscious life. The question is not whether you have control, it’s whether you’re awake to the choices already in front of you.

• You can choose curiosity over judgment.

• You can choose presence over performance.

• You can choose alignment over achievement.

Each small, honest choice rewires your sense of agency. Over time, these micro-decisions form a new identity, one that leads not from exhaustion, but from essence.

From Control to Creation

When you take control of your life, you’re reclaiming your creative power. You stop living reactively and begin to design a future rooted in truth, meaning, and possibility.

For entrepreneurs, this often marks a transition from building the business to becoming the person who can sustain it. For executives, it’s a move from external success to internal sovereignty, a place where decisions feel congruent rather than conflicted.

If you’re feeling the pull of that shift, know this: you’re not broken. You’re evolving.

Reflection Practice

Tonight, set aside 10 quiet minutes and write down:

1. Where in my life am I reacting instead of choosing?

2. What am I pretending not to know?

3. What truth, if I faced it, would free my energy?

Read your answers out loud. That moment, the sound of your own honesty, is where authorship begins.

Closing Invitation

When you’re ready to move from reaction to authorship, from holding everything together to living from wholeness, it’s time to take the next step.

Schedule a Call, and let’s begin the conversation. Together, we’ll chart the path from control to creation.