"I'll spend time with them once this project is finished." I've heard some version of that sentence from almost every driven, successful person I've worked with. The project changes. The promise stays the same. Once this is done, once things calm down, once I've got a little breathing room, then I'll really be there for the people I love. But here's the uncomfortable truth. There is no "then". There is only now, and the quiet way we keep postponing the very thing we say matters most.
I see it in so many women around me. The longing. And underneath it, the fear.
What if it doesn't happen anymore? What if I am too old?
They rarely say it out loud. They smile, they carry on, they answer "we'll see" when someone asks. And on the inside they're quietly grieving something that hasn't even been lost yet.
"I don't know who I am when I'm not working." She said it almost as a joke. We both knew it wasn't one. She had just sold her company. The thing she'd built for fifteen years. Everyone expected her to feel free. Instead she felt like she'd disappeared. No title. No inbox. No one needing her by nine. And in that silence, a question she had never made time for: who am I, actually?
She had the life. The corner office, the house she'd renovated twice, the holidays that looked beautiful on a screen. From the outside, she was the woman other women quietly measured themselves against.
For years, I told anyone who would listen that money doesn't make you happy. More than that. It's the underlying message of my book. And I genuinely believed it, because I had lived it.
"What?! You didn't talk for ten days? And no phone? Wow… I could never do that." I burst out laughing when my friend said it. We were at a theme park, our kids losing their minds on every ride, sugar and screams everywhere. Quite a contrast to back then. It was 2015. The year I spontaneously booked a ten-day silent retreat in Portugal. I had no idea what I was walking into. But something in me wanted to go.
She walks into my office like someone who has it all figured out.
Stylish blazer. Confident posture. A schedule packed with meetings, dinner plans, and a yoga class she’s been trying to fit in for weeks. From the outside, everything looks exactly right.
Then she sits down. Takes a breath. And her eyes give her away.
“I don’t get it,” she says, looking down. “I have everything I wanted. A good job. A nice apartment. People around me who care. But inside, I mostly feel… restless. I should be happy, right?”
Her name is Sarah. She’s 31. She runs campaigns for an international agency, gets praised by her team, is seen as a rising talent. On weekends she sees friends, visits exhibitions, and tries. Really tries. To enjoy the life she worked so hard to build.
But something keeps nagging.
In a world where the rat race toward success and material prosperity often prevails, the idea of combining ambition with spirituality may seem contradictory. Yet, I believe these two aspects are quite compatible. In fact, the more spiritual you are, the more success you will achieve. In this blog, you will find 10 tips to combine your business acumen with your sense of spirituality.