Hitting the bar

And so the end of 2024 approaches. I hit a few bars (in both senses of the word) – did I mention I became a best-selling published author? I also did quite a bit of coaching, both 121 and group. I hadn’t held out much hope for the group stuff but it worked well – and quite differently from the 121s. I kept my clients but alas didn’t win any new ones. I also turned fifty and, unusually for me, even enjoyed the celebrations.

2024 is the year I got stable; stable enough to want to shake things up in 2025.

But getting stable in itself is proof that my escape from a corporate career, if not from corporate income, is working.

Reading the first blog four years ago almost to the day I don’t sound that much different from how I feel today – maybe a bit fresher, a bit more hopeful. Then I was focused on building a tech startup (which ultimately failed). I had not the foggiest that I’d end up writing a book about leaving corporate life, but I think even then I knew my door would always be open to help people who were unhappy in their jobs.

I had a high bar for what life ‘outside’ would be like. Maybe it was unrealistic, but I’d dreamed about it for so many years.

My dad always moaned about his corporate job in pharmaceuticals, whereas my mum couldn’t have been more proud of her’s and enjoyed every second. My dad was made redundant in his fifties and never went back to “a proper job” – he blew his redundancy payout on a yacht chartering franchise and when it failed, he taught people how to sail. My mum went to university in her fifties, beat all her children to a First and worked past her retirement.

I may sound more like my dad, but I’m much more like my mum. I dedicated Corporate Escapology to her mostly because, as a librarian, she would have been proud of me writing a real book, but also because she set a high bar for me when it came to work: it should be enjoyable, it should make you feel good about yourself, it should help you grow.

And I guess that’s why, ultimately, I had to leave BP because if I hadn’t hit that high bar in the first 16 years, it was unlikely I’d hit it in the second.

I’d plateaued lower than my worth. Have you?

Other people saw it earlier than I did. But when I did, it was time to go.

Time to break through my BP glass ceiling and start fulfilling my potential – as well as get back to that high bar my mum set for work.

She died five years ago, so never had to see me volunteer to leave my secure job. She’d have been horrified, empathising with my wife Megan. I probably wouldn’t have told her until after the fact.

She’d still be worrying today, but she was a highly sensitive, empathetic woman and I know she’d have registered a change in me, in my self-confidence and self-belief.

She would sense that what I am getting from work now is just what she had got from work: enjoyment, self-worth and growth.

I don’t want to peddle a lie about this life – it’s certainly not unicorns and roses – but if you don’t want to be in the same place this time next year, a holiday is a good time to start preparing for what’s next. Far better to plan for this than be forced to respond to someone else’s timing.

Buy the book, buy the course or sign up to my coaching. Escapology Live group coaching starts in January - you can sign up here.

And the same goes if you know someone who needs help.

Happy holidays everyone, thanks for making my 2024 a really special one for me - a year I won’t ever forget.

That’s actually the kind of bar all of us should have.