A lot of people like the idea of change. We like imagining what our lives could look like if we were different. Maybe we'd be more confident, less anxious, more disciplined, better at setting boundaries, more successful, healthier, or finally doing the thing we've been saying we're going to do for years. The harder part is figuring out how to change and how to sustain changes. That is where a lot of our enthusiasm tends to disappear.

As a career coach, I now see so many talented professionals stuck in the same loop—working themselves to exhaustion, personalizing their str