Latest / Women Who Lead: Leadership, Career & Influence / Stop Chasing 'Best Life': The Power of Present-Moment Leadership | Women Who Lead
Transcript
- You are waiting for a promotion, a weight loss milestone, or that one perfect weekend to finally start living. But what if the life you’re chasing is already happening, and you’re just too busy looking at the horizon to see it? Let’s get real for a second. We have been sold a lie so pervasive that we don’t even recognize it as a lie anymore. It’s the idea that happiness is a destination. You know the script. You tell yourself, "Once I get this senior director title, then I’ll relax." Or maybe it’s, "Once I launch my business, once I hit six figures, once the kids are older, then I can finally breathe." We treat our current selves like a rough draft, something temporary and flawed that needs editing before it becomes worthy of joy. This is what psychologists call arrival bias, and it is the silent killer of presence in leadership. I saw this in myself for years. I was running Fortune 500 strategy meetings, surrounded by glass walls and high stakes, but I felt like an imposter in my own life. I thought I had to earn the right to feel good. I thought peace was a reward for suffering. So I worked harder. I said yes to everything. I wore my exhaustion like a badge of honor because, in the corporate world, burnout is often mistaken for dedication. But here is the truth I learned only after walking away from that corner office: you cannot lead well when you are constantly fleeing from your present moment. When you are always aiming for "next," you miss the power of "now." And leadership, real influence, happens in the now. We need to talk about how we measure success. For most women in leadership, success is a scoreboard. It’s metrics, KPIs, revenue targets, and external validation. It’s linear. You climb up, you check off boxes, you move to the next level. But living your best life isn’t a score; it’s a state of being. Think about the difference between holding a trophy and feeling alive. A trophy sits on a shelf. Feeling alive happens in your chest, in your breath, in the way you engage with the person sitting across from you. When I coached a CEO recently, let’s call her Sarah, she was terrified. Her company was booming, but she felt hollow. She told me, "Deborah, I did everything right. Why do I feel like I’m failing?" I asked her, "What does failure look like to you right now?" She paused. Then she said, "It looks like missing dinner with my husband again." That was the crack in the armor. She had achieved the goal, but she had lost the state. She had traded connection for accomplishment. Living your best life means aligning your daily actions with your internal values, not just your external goals. It means finding integrity in the mundane moments. It means realizing that how you treat your team during a crisis is more important than the quarterly report they hand you afterward. I want you to think about your weekends. Really think about them. Do you spend Saturday morning dreading Sunday evening? Do you scroll through Instagram while your coffee gets cold, comparing your messy Tuesday to someone else’s curated highlight reel? If you only allow yourself to enjoy life on Saturdays and Sundays, you are essentially saying that five days of your week are worthless. That is a dangerous mindset for a leader. When you view your weekdays as merely a means to an end, you disconnect from the very skills that make you effective: focus, creativity, resilience, and empathy. These things don’t just happen on vacation. They happen when you are fully engaged in the work, when you are solving hard problems, when you are collaborating with colleagues who challenge you. But you can only be engaged if you accept that the work itself is part of the life you are living. You don’t have to do it all at once, but you do have to do it with intention. Stop saving your joy for the weekend. Start injecting presence into your Monday morning stand-up. Start listening to your direct report not because you have to, but because you are curious. That shift changes everything. It turns drudgery into purpose. There is a subtle but massive difference between performing and being present. Performing is about impression management. It’s about showing up as the person you think others want to see. It’s exhausting. It requires constant monitoring of your image, your tone, your body language. Presence, on the other hand, is about authenticity. It’s showing up as you are, flaws and all, and trusting that you are enough. As leaders, we often confuse visibility with value. We think if we are seen working late, we are valuable. But true value comes from clarity, decisiveness, and emotional intelligence. When you stop performing, you free up enormous amounts of mental energy. You stop worrying about whether you sound smart enough and start focusing on whether you are being helpful. You stop trying to control every outcome and start trusting your ability to adapt. This is where sustainable success lives. It’s not in the hustle; it’s in the harmony. It’s in knowing that you can handle whatever comes your way because you are grounded in who you are, not in what you achieve. What’s the cost of that silence? The silence of ignoring your own needs because you’re focused on someone else’s agenda. I hear this all the time from women who are incredible at their jobs but terrible at setting boundaries with themselves. They say yes to projects that drain them because they fear saying no will make them seem uncooperative. They push through fatigue because they believe rest is lazy. But let me tell you, there is nothing lazy about preserving your energy for what matters. There is nothing weak about stepping back to recalibrate. When you ignore your own state, you eventually break. And when you break, you take everyone around you down with you. Burnout isn’t just bad for you; it’s bad for your organization. It creates a culture of anxiety and reactivity. By prioritizing your state of being—your health, your peace, your joy—you become a steadier leader. You become a container for your team’s stress rather than a source of it. This is strategic empathy. It’s understanding that you cannot pour from an empty cup, not because it’s a cliché, but because it’s physics. An empty cup has nothing to offer. A full cup overflows naturally. So, how do we actually live this? How do we shift from chasing goals to inhabiting states? It starts with small, deliberate acts of attention. Maybe it’s taking three deep breaths before you enter a meeting room. Maybe it’s putting your phone in another room for twenty minutes after you get home. Maybe it’s simply asking yourself, "How am I doing right now?" instead of "What am I doing next?" These micro-moments of awareness build a foundation of presence. They remind you that you are here, now, alive. And that is enough. You don’t need to add more to your plate to prove your worth. You need to clear space on it to experience your life. Start today. Pick one moment—a commute, a lunch break, a walk—and be fully in it. Notice the light, the sounds, the feelings. Don’t judge it. Just feel it. This is not indulgence; it’s recalibration. It’s remembering that you are a human being, not a human doing. And when you remember that, everything else falls into place. Ultimately, living your best life is not about achieving perfection. It’s about embracing wholeness. It’s about accepting that some days will be chaotic, some will be boring, and some will be beautiful. And all of those days are yours. You don’t have to wait for the chaos to stop to find peace. You can find peace within the chaos. You can lead from a place of wholeness, even when things are falling apart. This is the kind of leadership the world needs right now. Leaders who are grounded. Leaders who are authentic. Leaders who understand that their value is inherent, not earned. When you lead from this place, you inspire others to do the same. You create a ripple effect of presence and purpose. You show your team that it’s okay to be human. It’s okay to struggle. It’s okay to pause. And in doing so, you build a culture that doesn’t just produce results, but produces people. People who thrive. People who belong. That is the legacy we leave. Not just what we built, but who we became along the way. Thank you for being here, for listening, and for leading with your whole heart. I’ll see you next time. Until then, stay present, stay proud, and keep breathing. You’ve got this.