Slow Down to Go Faster

Do you ever feel like the only way to get where you're going is to push harder?

More hours. More discipline. More willpower. If you're falling behind, the answer must be to do more — not less. And so you put your head down and grind. You skip the walk with your colleagues. You eat lunch at your desk. You tell yourself you'll rest when it's done.

I've been there. More times than I'd like to admit.

There was a season in my career when 12-hour days had become my normal. My colleagues would step outside for a walk in the middle of the day. I watched them go, but I never joined. I simply didn't have the bandwidth. There was too much to do, and taking a break felt like a luxury I hadn't earned yet.

Then one afternoon, I found myself with a 30-minute gap before several more hours of work. Something made me decide to take that walk.

I came back with a new perspective on the problem I'd been wrestling with for days. What I thought would take hours took 30 minutes. I went home early for the first time in a long while.

That walk didn't slow me down. It was the reason I finished.

What We Get Wrong About Discipline

Here's the story most high achievers tell themselves: If I just push through, I'll get there faster.

The subtext sounds something like: I should be able to handle this. I should have this done by now. Slowing down is falling behind.

These thoughts feel like discipline. They feel like drive. But I want you to consider something — what if they're actually the thing slowing you down?

Think of it this way. Imagine you're running a marathon. You've trained, you're ready, and you're determined to finish strong. Now imagine strapping a heavy pack to your back before the starting gun fires. The pack is filled with every "I should" you carry: I should push through. I should never need a break. I should be further along by now.

You still might finish. But it will take longer. It will hurt more. And somewhere around mile 18, you might wonder why you ever thought this was supposed to feel good.

The weight isn't discipline. The weight is the story you're telling yourself about what discipline requires.

What Runners Know That We've Forgotten

I'm a runner. A slow one — I'll fully own that. But I've learned something from running that I now bring into every area of my work and my coaching.

Jeff Galloway, US Olympian and running coach, has spent 50 years studying what actually helps runners finish marathons faster. His finding might surprise you: strategic walk breaks don't slow you down. They help you go faster.

In surveys of runners who shifted from non-stop running to a deliberate run-walk-run approach, the average improvement was over 13 minutes in a marathon. Runners who took intentional breaks outpaced runners who pushed through — because their bodies recovered more efficiently, their form held up longer, and they didn't hit the wall as hard in the final miles.

Over 98% of Galloway's participants finish their marathons. Not because they pushed harder. Because they learned when to ease up.

The same principle lives in your work, your leadership, and your goals.

Running With a Lighter Pack

When you give yourself permission to slow down — strategically, intentionally — three things happen.

You're more likely to finish.

Burnout doesn't announce itself. It builds quietly under the surface of all those 12-hour days, all those skipped lunches, all those "I'll rest when it's done" promises. The leaders I work with who burn out aren't lazy. They're the ones who believed they had to carry everything, all the time, without stopping. Releasing even a little of that weight — one walk, one slower morning, one week without working late — isn't weakness. It's what makes the long game possible.

You can actually move faster.

This is the part that feels counterintuitive until you experience it yourself. When you step away from a problem, your brain doesn't stop working. It shifts into a different mode — one that's better at pattern recognition, creative connection, and seeing what you couldn't see when you were deep in the weeds. My 30-minute walk didn't cost me time. It gave me hours back. This isn't a productivity hack. It's how we're wired.

You'll actually enjoy the journey.

This one matters more than we let ourselves admit. When every day is a grind you're trying to get through, you stop noticing the moments worth savoring. You stop feeling proud of how far you've come. The finish line becomes the only thing that counts, and you arrive there exhausted, already scanning for the next thing to accomplish. A little more lightness along the way doesn't diminish what you're building. It makes it worth building.

A Few Questions Worth Sitting With

I want to leave you with something to take into your day — not a to-do list, but a moment of honest reflection.

What weight are you carrying right now?

Get specific. What are the "I should" thoughts that show up most often? I should be further along. I should be able to handle more. I should already know how to do this. Write them down if you can. There's something clarifying about seeing them outside of your own head.

What would it look like to set one of them down?

Not forever. Not abandoning your standards or your ambition. Just for today — or even for an afternoon. What would you do differently if you gave yourself a little more grace? What might you notice? What might become easier?

What is your version of the walk?

It doesn't have to be a literal walk (though it might be). It's whatever gives your mind the kind of space where better answers tend to appear. For some people it's a drive with music. For others it's a slow morning before the emails start. For others still it's a conversation with someone who helps them think clearly.

Whatever it is — you haven't earned it yet is never the right reason to skip it.

You don't have to carry all of it to prove you're serious about where you're going. Real strength isn't about how much weight you can carry. It's about being wise enough to put some of it down.

You Already Know What to Do. The Problem Is Your Environment.

She came to our coaching session frustrated.

Not because she lacked ambition. She had plenty of that. She had a clear picture of where she wanted to go: leading strategy, driving vision, managing people and projects at a higher level. She knew exactly what kind of leader she wanted to be.

The problem was her calendar.

Week after week, it filled up with execution. Detailed, urgent, necessary work. And because she was good at it, more kept coming. By the time Friday rolled around, she'd already worked through the weekend once or twice that month. The high-level thinking she wanted to do? It sat on the back burner. Again.

"I know I need to change this," she told me. "I know what I should be doing differently. I just can't seem to make it happen."

The Real Problem Isn't Information

Here's what I want you to hear: she didn't need more advice.

She already had the roadmap. She'd read the books, listened to the podcasts, talked it through in coaching. She knew she needed to protect her time, delegate more, create space for strategic thinking. She knew it all.

And she was still stuck.

This is one of the most common and most misunderstood traps I see accomplished professionals fall into. We assume that if we know what to do, we'll eventually do it. That knowledge will translate into change if we just remind ourselves often enough.

But it doesn't work that way. Knowledge doesn't change behavior. Environment does.

The Antarctica Problem

Think of it this way. You can absolutely grow a flower garden in Antarctica. The knowledge of how to grow flowers is the same anywhere in the world. But the environment works against you at every turn. The cold, the darkness, the frozen ground. Every step requires enormous effort. Most people give up, not because they don't know how to garden, but because the conditions make it brutally hard.

Now imagine that same gardener in a warm climate with rich soil and plenty of sun. Suddenly, the same actions produce results. The work feels possible. Progress happens.

This is the difference between knowing what to do and being set up to actually do it.

When we struggle to act on what we know, we tend to blame ourselves. Our discipline, our priorities, our willpower. But often the real issue is that nothing in our environment is making the right action easy. And everything in it is making the old patterns effortless.

The shift happens when you stop asking, "Why can't I make myself do this?" and start asking, "What would make this easier to do?"

Start With the Loudest Voice in the Room

Before you can change your environment, you need to understand what's actually stopping you.

And most of the time, it's not logistics. It's a voice.

When you think about doing the thing you say you want to do, whether that's blocking time for strategic work, saying no to a task that isn't yours, or asking for a different kind of role, pay attention to what happens inside. There's usually a loud, immediate reaction. A thought that rushes in before you've even made a decision.

If I don't handle this, it won't get done right. I can't afford to take my foot off the gas right now. This isn't the right time. I'll do it after this project.

Those voices feel like truth. They feel urgent. They feel like they're protecting you from something.

And here's the thing: they probably are.

The Voices Were Built to Help You

I want to share something personal here.

When I was in my PhD program, everyone in my lab took a three-day ski trip. Everyone. And I didn't go.

Even then, in the moment, I knew that three days away would not derail my degree. Intellectually, I knew that. But the fear from the thought was so real, so immediate, that I stayed. I told myself I had too much to do. That I couldn't afford to fall behind. That people who succeed don't take breaks like that.

Those voices had been with me since I was a child. I had learned early that saying no to fun and yes to work was how you achieved things. How you got into a good school. How you earned the opportunities you wanted. And it worked. Those thoughts helped me accomplish real goals.

The problem is that I never went back and reviewed them.

I carried them into adulthood without questioning whether they still fit. And I operated by them automatically, the way you follow a habit you formed years ago without ever stopping to ask whether it's still serving you.

This is what most high achievers are doing. Not because they're unaware or unexamined. But because those patterns formed when you were younger and less powerful. They helped you then. And they've never been officially retired.

What to Do With the Voices

You don't have to fight them. You don't have to prove them wrong. You just have to see them clearly.

Start here.

Write down the voices you hear most often. The ones that come up when you're about to do something different, something that moves toward the leader you want to be. Don't filter. Just list them.

Notice when they arrive. Are they loudest on Sunday nights? When your manager sends a last-minute request? When you're about to decline a task? The pattern matters.

Ask what dream is paying the price. What are you not doing, not building, not becoming, because these voices keep redirecting you? Name it specifically. The more concrete, the better.

Ask whether the voice is still true. Not whether it was ever true. Not whether it made sense once. But whether it's accurate now, given who you are and what you're actually capable of.

Most of the time, when you look directly at the voice, it loses some of its power. Not all of it. But enough.

Then Build the Environment

Once you understand what's been holding the pattern in place, you can start making small, practical shifts in your environment that make the right actions easier.

This doesn't have to be dramatic.

It might mean blocking ninety minutes on Thursday mornings and treating it as non-negotiable as a client meeting. It might mean putting one strategic project on your weekly agenda before the reactive tasks get listed. It might mean naming one thing you will stop doing this month, so something else can begin.

Small things. Repeated. They create more room. And more room creates more possibility.

You are not trying to overhaul everything at once. You are trying to make the garden slightly warmer. Slightly more hospitable. So that what you already know can finally take root.

You Don't Have to Figure This Out Alone

If you're reading this and you're not sure which voice is the loudest, or you can't quite name the pattern that's keeping you stuck, that's a signal worth paying attention to.

The work of identifying these patterns is often clearer with support. Someone who can reflect back what you're describing and help you see it from the outside.

If you want a space where you can do this work alongside other accomplished women who are navigating the same territory, we are addressing exactly this in the Women Leaders Club in April 2026. You don't have to keep circling the same spot alone.

You already know what you want. You've known for a while.

The question was never whether you have the information. The question is whether your environment is built to support you, and whether the voices running in the background are ones you actually still believe.

Real strength is not just knowing the way. It's building the conditions that make it possible to walk it.

Why Your Dreams Aren't Big Enough (And What It's Costing You)

Have you ever set a goal, worked toward it, achieved it—and then stood at the finish line wondering, is this it?

Maybe you aimed for a director role and got it. Maybe you finally hit the salary number you had in your head for years. And yet, there's something quietly unsatisfying about it. Not because it wasn't real. But because somewhere along the way, you made your dream small enough to feel safe. And safe, it turns out, doesn't always feel like enough.

There's a reason for that. And there's something worth doing about it.

The Running Lesson That Changed How I Think About Goals

When I started running, a 5k felt impossible. I couldn't imagine running 10k. It seemed like something other people did—people with a different body, more time, more discipline than me.

When I started learning from experienced runners, every single one of them said the same thing: if your goal is 10k, train for 13k. Don't practice running the distance you want to finish. Practice running further than you need to.

The reason stuck with me. If you can run 13k, then 10k becomes your floor, not your ceiling. It means that on the days when everything is off—it's too hot, the course has more hills than you expected, you didn't sleep well, your legs feel heavy—you still finish. Because you've built capacity beyond what the moment demands.

Your career works the same way.

If you only aim for exactly what you want, you have no buffer. Every obstacle, every setback, every unexpected challenge threatens the goal. But when you dream bigger than your target—when you build toward something beyond what you think you need—you create reserves. Resilience. Room to still succeed even when conditions aren't perfect.

And conditions are never perfect.

Dreaming Big Isn't About the Title or the Money

Let's be clear about something. When I talk about dreaming big, I'm not talking about chasing status for its own sake. I'm not talking about a specific title or a number in your bank account—unless that's genuinely what matters to you.

Dreaming big is about designing a life that feels like yours.

It's about work that energizes you instead of draining you. It's about relationships, time, creativity, and impact—not just output. It's about waking up on a Monday and feeling something other than dread. It's about building a career that reflects the full range of who you are, not just the most practical version of yourself.

That's what's at stake when you don't dream big enough. Not just a missed promotion. A missed life.

When you consistently undershoot your own aspirations, you end up building someone else's vision instead of your own. You optimize for "good enough" when "remarkable" was always available to you. You settle into roles that fit, rather than roles that stretch you toward what you actually want. Over time, that gap between where you are and where you know you could be becomes a quiet frustration that's hard to name—but impossible to ignore.

Why Women Leaders Resist Dreaming Big

In my work coaching high-achieving women, I've noticed that the resistance to big dreams is rarely about capability. It's almost always about something else.

1. Guilt: Dreaming big feels greedy.

Many women have been raised to prioritize others—their families, their teams, their organizations. So when a bold desire rises up ("I want to run this company," "I want to work from anywhere," "I want to be known for this work")—it can immediately be followed by a pang of guilt. Who am I to want so much? Isn't that selfish?

It isn't. Wanting a bigger, more meaningful life doesn't take anything away from anyone. In fact, the more you build a life aligned with what you truly value, the more you have to give—with clarity, energy, and intention rather than quiet resentment.

2. Fear of what success demands.

This one surprises people, but it's one of the most common patterns I see. Many women are not afraid of failing. They're afraid of succeeding.

Because success brings visibility. It brings attention, expectation, more responsibility—professionally and socially. It means stepping fully into your power in a world that doesn't always make that easy for women. And so the subconscious mind does something clever: it keeps your dreams modest enough that you never have to find out what happens if you actually get there.

3. Fear of losing yourself.

Underneath the ambition, there's often a quieter worry: Will I still be me? Will my friendships change? Will people treat me differently? Will I become someone my family doesn't recognize?

This isn't just about workload or responsibility. It's about identity. It's about belonging. Stepping into a bigger, bolder version of your career can feel like stepping away from the version of yourself that the people you love have always known. And that's a loss many women aren't sure they're willing to risk.

How to Actually Dream Bigger

Dreaming big is a practice. And like any practice, it starts with concrete steps.

Step 1: Allow yourself to want what you actually want—without thinking about how.

Start with the wildest, boldest version of your dream. Not the responsible one. Not the one you'd say out loud in a meeting. The one that makes you feel a little exposed just thinking it. Write it down. Don't edit it. Don't justify it. Just let it exist on the page.

Step 2: 10x it.

Whatever you just wrote—make it bigger. Not because you're committing to it, but because reaching for 10x forces your brain out of its habitual limits. You start to see possibilities that "realistic" thinking actively hides from you. This is exploration, not obligation. Let yourself roam.

Step 3: Build your roadmap.

Now, come back to what's genuinely yours. What resonated in all of that? What felt true, even if it's still a little scary? From everything you've been exploring, identify the top three things you want to set as goals for the next two years—and what needs to happen to get there. These become your direction. Not a fantasy. A plan.

Final Thought

You've already proven you can set a goal and reach it. You've already proven you can do hard things. The question worth sitting with now isn't can I do this? It's what am I not letting myself want?

Dreaming big is not reckless. It's not naive. And it's certainly not greedy. It is the courageous act of deciding that your life—not just your career, but your whole, actual life—is worth designing with intention.

Train for 13k. Run your 10k with ease. And then dream bigger again.

This dreaming-big exercise is one we do together in the Women Leaders Club—a space where accomplished women support each other in building careers and lives they're genuinely excited about. If it sounds interesting, come check it out.

What If Your Greatest Strength Is the One You Can't See?

Have you ever received feedback that caught you completely off guard, not because it was negative, but because someone praised you for something you thought was just... normal?

Maybe a colleague marveled at how you "always know the right thing to say in tense moments," and you thought, "Doesn't everyone do that?" Or perhaps your manager highlighted your ability to "see the big picture," while you were convinced you were just stating the obvious.

Here's what's fascinating: the things that come most naturally to you are often invisible to you. Your brain doesn't flag them as special because they require no effort. But to everyone else? They're watching you do something they find difficult, complex, or even impossible.

This gap between what you think is ordinary and what others find extraordinary is where your hidden strengths live. And in our January Women Leaders Club session, we explored this exact thing. People got surprised by the hidden strengths they weren't aware of, and felt more confident to tackle their current challenges.

A Self-Reflection Exercise (But You'll Need a Few People)

Since this exercise was so powerful in our session, I want to share what you can do yourself. Well, you do need a few other people too. Because here's the truth: you cannot see your own hidden strengths in isolation. You need someone else to reflect them back.

The Exercise:

Step 1: Think of a moment you are proud.

A moment where you took a calculated risk without knowing the outcome. A moment when you were scared but did it anyway because you knew it was important to you. It doesn't have to be huge. Sometimes the small acts of courage reveal the most.

Step 2: Tell the story out loud to someone you trust.

Describe the moment, the situation, how you responded, what happened. Don't edit yourself or downplay it. Just share the experience as you lived it.

Step 3: Let them ask questions, but no feedback yet.

They shouldn't jump to telling you what they see. First, they ask clarifying questions. Questions like:
"How did you feel in that moment?"
"What made you take that action?"
"What was at stake for you?"

These questions get underneath the surface. The strengths often live in what you were thinking and feeling, not just what you did.

Step 4: Then they share the strengths they hear in your story.

Now they reflect back what they noticed. Not what you said about yourself, but what they heard. The patterns. The capabilities. The ways you showed up that you might be dismissing as "just what I did."

Step 5: Repeat with someone else.

Different people notice different patterns. One person might hear your strategic thinking. Another might notice your empathy. Someone else might spot your courage. You need multiple perspectives to build the full picture.

What Happens When You Claim Your Strengths

One of my clients had an interview the next day and was very nervous. She felt they wouldn't think she was a good candidate, although she believed she was qualified. After doing this exercise, she realized her hidden strengths and got confident that she was the right candidate. She showed up with that energy in the interview.

She told me later, it was the easiest and smoothest interview she'd ever had. She never knew an interview could feel this way. Of course, she got the job.


We cover leadership topics for women in the Women Leaders Club. This was what we discussed last week. If you want to know more about it, check it out here.