Good Morning Reader
This may not be the hardest season of your life, but it can feel like the only one that matters.
And when it does, something quietly shifts. The present gets louder. The past gets further away. Everything you have already built, survived, and learned starts to feel less real than the problem sitting in front of you right now.
That feeling is not weakness.
But it is lying to you.
It was my birthday a couple of days ago.
For me it has always been a day for reflection rather than celebration. Not in a heavy way but a deliberate pause. A moment to stop and ask something most of us are too busy to ask during the year.
I ask myself two questions every birthday. The first is this: how far have you come?
Not someone else's version of progress. Not the gap between where you are and where you planned to be. Just you, honestly, this time last year versus now.
The second question I will come back to next week. It deserves its own space.
But the first one is the reason I am writing this newsletter.
Because this year, when I sat with it honestly, I had to confront something uncomfortable. When close friends have asked me recently how things are going, my honest answer has been that things feel harder than normal. We are having to pivot and adapt in the business. The environment has shifted. Decisions that should be made externally are not being made & the pressure and impact of that land on me as the founder.
And when someone asks how you are doing and that is the truth sitting in your chest, it is very easy to answer from that truth only. The most recent truth. The loudest one.
That is recency bias. It is simple. Recent events are remembered and weighted more heavily than older ones, even when the older ones are far more representative of who you actually are and what you are actually capable of. The latest problem starts to feel like the truest story.
So I sat with the first question properly this year. How far have you come?
And what came back stopped me.
The conversations that happened this year that I had already forgotten. The clients whose lives genuinely shifted. The moments where I held my nerve when I could have walked away. The version of me from twelve months ago who did not know how to handle something I now handle without thinking.
And that was just the professional side.
On the personal side, major milestones had been achieved. Moments with my wife, my son, and my daughter that I am genuinely proud of. Moments that brought a smile to my face just sitting with them. Spiritually and physically I had also moved forward in ways I had struggled with before. Intentions I had written down, things that had previously fallen into the gap, had been fulfilled. There was a lot to be grateful for. A lot to be proud of.
I had forgotten almost all of it. Not because it was not real but because the present was so loud it had drowned the past out.
Most of us are so deep inside the current pressure we have lost access to our own evidence. That is exactly what an executive coach helps you surface.
Nobody ever asks the person at the top "What can I do to help you grow?" But when did someone last help you remember how far you have already come?
That is exactly the conversation I want to have with you.
You already know what I am about to say. Because you have felt it too.
Over the last twelve to eighteen months, leaders have not just been dealing with normal pressure. They have been leading through a denser mix of AI expectations, uncertain returns, geopolitical instability, and continuous disruption. That combination makes it easier for the current problem to dominate attention and distort perspective. The pressure is not imagined. The load really has changed. This is not just a busy season. It is a denser leadership environment.
And inside that environment, the issue is rarely capability. It is that the latest problem becomes so loud it erases all evidence of who they have already become.
They forget what they have survived. They forget what they know. They forget that this is not the first hard season. Just the current one.
Senior leaders live inside constant noise, decisions, ambiguity, and responsibility. Over time that creates a strange kind of amnesia. They remember the current pressure with extraordinary clarity. But their own track record becomes blurry, distant, almost irrelevant feeling.
When you forget how much you have already handled, something shifts in how you lead. You start leading from depletion instead of perspective. You feel alone in a way that is not quite accurate. You feel behind in a way the evidence does not support. You feel less grounded at exactly the moment others need steadiness from you.
Not because you are not capable. Because recency bias has temporarily stolen your access to the proof that you are.
Here is what I want you to do this week.
Sit with one question.
How far have you come in the last twelve months?
Not compared to where you wanted to be. Not measured against someone else's timeline. Just you, this time last year versus now. To help you answer it honestly, ask yourself:
- What did you not know how to do then that you do now?
- What conversation would have floored you twelve months ago that you have since had?
- What did you survive that you were not sure you would?
The evidence is there. You just stopped looking at it.
The recency bias that distorts your perspective also distorts how you see your own leadership. The current pressure makes the gap feel bigger than it is and your progress feel smaller than it is.
The Intention Gap Scorecard helps you see both clearly. Not where you are falling short. Where you have already grown and where the gap still lives.
[Take the scorecard here]