To design the life you want, you first have to notice when you’re not really choosing at all. That’s the idea Biran brought to a recent episode of our podcast. Her line was simple: don’t go for the promotion, and don’t just set up a business, because it’s the only thing you know how to do.
Biran’s own path made the point vivid. She quit her job, started her own business, and moved to the UK ten years ago without a support network, without friends there already, without existing connections. She’s clear that none of this was easy. But she’s equally clear that it was possible, and that the difference between drifting and designing came down to making the choice on purpose.
Why the default path feels safer
For a lot of the people we work with, mid-career professionals and academics especially, the next step often looks obvious. You get offered the promotion, so you take it. You leave academia, so you start the kind of business everyone else in your field starts. It’s not that these are bad choices. It’s that they’re rarely examined. We’ve written before about how the values we hold can sometimes work against us rather than for us, and the same thing applies here: the path that feels safest isn’t always the one you’d choose if you stopped to ask what you actually wanted.
Choosing for a reason
Biran’s other point is the one worth holding onto longer. She didn’t just say choose consciously, she said do it for a reason. Her argument is that when you choose a life for a reason, you end up loving it, and that love is what makes you fulfilled. And fulfilment, in her view, is what makes you a high performer, not the other way round. That reorders something a lot of ambitious people get backwards. We tend to think performance comes first and satisfaction follows. Biran’s experience suggests it works the other way.
This doesn’t mean every big decision needs to be a dramatic leap like changing countries or quitting a job outright. It might mean pausing before you say yes to the next obvious step and asking whether it’s actually what you want, or just what’s available. It might mean naming the reason behind a choice you’ve already made, and checking whether that reason still holds.
Try naming one choice in your working life right now, a role, a project, a direction, and ask honestly whether you chose it or simply accepted it. See what comes up, and if it’s worth talking through, that’s exactly the kind of conversation coaching is for.
Be sure to check out more from Biran at: Biran’s website and Biran’s LinkedIn.
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