When a Demanding Year Shifts Your Perspective

In demanding years, I often see senior leaders, executives, and high performers reassessing what their work is asking of them. This piece reflects what tends to surface after sustained pressure and why those moments often clarify what matters most.

If you need a breath after a demanding year, that’s normal. Sometimes a brief pause is what makes the impact fully register.

This has been one of the toughest periods I’ve seen across organizations. People have been carrying a lot all at once:

• Navigating return to office and uncertainty around remote arrangements

• Integrating AI while also wondering what it means for their own roles

• Watching reductions in workforce and questioning what comes next

• Doing more with fewer people

• Trying to motivate teams who are also stretched thin

• Keeping their own lives moving alongside everything else

What happens in years like this is something I see again and again in my work. Pressure creates clarity. Not because people are looking for it, but because intensity tends to reveal what has been demanding the most from them.

When things slow down, even briefly, the real questions rise:

• Why do you work in the way you do?

• What do you want your career to mean?

• How should it fit with the life you want for yourself?

These questions are signals of what you want moving forward. Something in you is starting to come into focus.

What becomes clear in demanding years is rarely accidental. It usually points to what matters most and becomes the starting point for the choices that come next.