I have become a lot more interested in freedom as I have got older.
Not in the dramatic sense of wanting to escape work or disappear to a beach somewhere. Although sometimes I do really want this! I love working. I love making a difference in the leadership, lives and careers of people I work with. I love building new things and doing work that matters.
What has changed is how much I value choice.
Choice over how I spend my time. Choice over the work I say yes to. Choice over the people I work with. Choice over how much space work takes up in the rest of my life.
And I think this is where many successful leaders quietly get caught.
We spend years building careers that give us more responsibility, more money and more impact, but somewhere along the way we can end up with fewer choices.
The salary gets harder to walk away from. The title starts to feel like part of our identity. The role becomes so consuming that everything else has to fit around it. We keep telling ourselves that this is simply what senior leadership requires.
Maybe. But I think it is worth challenging.
Because if success gives you less and less control over your own life, is that really the version of success you still want?
Freedom looks different for everyone.
For one person, it is a four-day week. For someone else, it is building enough financial security to take a risk. It might be starting a business, creating a portfolio career, working remotely, travelling less, travelling more, stepping out of a role that has become all-consuming or simply having enough energy left at the end of the day to enjoy the life you are working so hard to support.
This is the part that can be uncomfortable. More freedom usually asks something of us.
It may require us to earn less. Let go of status. Say no more often. Build skills or income streams before we need them. Have a conversation we have been avoiding. Stop pretending that being permanently available is the same thing as being committed.
Freedom is not always handed to you. You have to design for it.
That is the challenge I would put to you - Is your career creating more choices for you, or quietly taking them away?
Because the answer to that may tell you a lot about what your next version of “more” needs to be.