Do you sometimes feel like you're living a lie?

If life were a checklist of success how are you really doing?

Does your life look great from the outside with career success, material comforts, maybe a family you love, but it's not the life you want?

Does you success at work leave you feeling hollow and unhappy because it comes at such a high personal price?

If the answer to these questions is yes, I can honestly say 'I know how you feel'. Because I do know how you feel.

I spent too many years in my successful executive role juggling so many balls I ended up dizzy and almost sick with the side effects.  As a committed, ambitious high flyer, everything looked great from the outside. I had climbed the corporate ladder and achieved great success, I was well compensated and enjoyed my CMO role which took me to fabulous places all over the world to work on challenging projects with really interesting people. I was 'living the dream'. 

I was also a working Mum to three wonderful children (and latterly Grandmother to one). But, I was away from our home most days, of most weeks, and despite my husband being a wonderful work from home Dad, my burden of guilt was huge and most of the time I felt like a failure and a fraud.

Intellectually, I knew what was most important to me - first I would rank my family, my marriage and my health. Financial stability came in second. My career, my work family, third.  It was easily able to articulate these priorities, and so it should have been equally easy to make the right decisions to reflect those priorities, right?

Wrong.

The principle of priorities was easy, the actual day to day decisions were very hard. 

My wake up call came when I missed my son Joel's 6th Birthday. This was nothing new, I had missed many significant family dates before. But this time was different - for me.

I was working in Asia and the time zone screwed me up. I woke up on the 7th May, a day after Joel's birthday and when I looked at my phone I saw this photo from my husband, with a smiling Joel waving at me over his cake.

I realised with a sickening lurch I had completely missed his 6th birthday.  He'd had a party, blown out his candles, cut his cake, opened his presents and all without even a call home from his absent Mum. 

Joel is now 15 and doesn't remember this incident, but it rocked my world. 

Initially my reaction was I had to quit my job immediately. I was living so far off my values and priorities that some drastic shift had to happen before it was too late. But I didn't want to quit my job. I loved my work and was committed to the team and our goals.

I felt conflicted, deflated and a failure.  I cried the entire flight home.

But quitting my job, would I realised, feel like a sacrifice and I didn't want any more sacrifice in my life. I wanted to find another way to succeed at life - at home and at work. So I was determined to look for another answer.  I hired a personal coach and worked through a lot of stuff.  As part of this I started to create a framework I now call 'success not sacrifice'. I've developed this framework over the past decade and it has served me extremely well.  In fact it helped me transform my life from one of sacrifice to one of success.

This is not about 'having it all'. I certainly don't believe that story. But this framework does help you have what matters most to you - across all aspects of your life.  

It takes work. You must decide the things you are prepared to give up because they aren't that important to you. And as a result you are able to guard against the loss of everything that really, truly matters. By creating your own 'success not sacrifice' model you lay down the priorities and create a successful life without having to make costly personal sacrifices.

Now I work with professionals with a similar set of challenges to those I've experienced and overcome. I use my coaching credentials, corporate success and rich life lessons to inform my approach.  My Success Not Sacrifice framework is helping lots of women reframe their challenges and craft a life they really want to live, one in which they can thrive.

I'd be delighted to be your coach and pass on the lessons I've learned. I know this approach works because it worked for me and it's working for many of my clients. If you want to stop sacrificing what's really important to you and start succeeding at life and not just work, get in touch, I'd love to hear from you.