Siobhan, hello and welcome to the aligned achiever podcast. I’m your host, Siobhan Barnes, and I cannot believe that we are officially in the month of February. I don’t know about you, but from what I’ve been hearing and experiencing with my clients and in my own life and business, is that the year has got off to a racing start. Now, some of you know that I’m based in Hong Kong, and we celebrate Chinese New Year here, and this year, it’s a little bit later, around the 17th of Feb, and I feel like that’s meant that we’ve come back into the new year all guns blazing, ready to go, trying to move things forward before the Chinese New Year break comes online now.

This had me thinking about 2026, in greater depth. And for me, I know that I’m really desiring to be more intentional with my energy, with my time this year. And I really feel like there I have never felt more strongly than ever before that the most important skill that we need in the age of AI and corporate restructures and how things are changing is this personal mastery, understanding how to work with instead of against, yourself, Understanding how you operate and how to actually move forward on the goals that feel right and true for you.

Now, I know that sounds really basic, and the assumption is that we should all know how to motivate ourselves and to push ourselves and to create the results that we’re looking for, but so often we don’t. And look, I’ve been working as a coach for over a decade, and I find myself in patterns of feeling stuck or inertia, and need support around that, and am getting support around that. And so this personal mastery journey as I’m embarking on my own portfolio career and really diving deeper into what it is that I really want to do with my business and what my expertise is.

It’s really the personal mastery piece, and that’s really understanding not just who you are and your identity, but really working with how we can overcome the conditioning that gets in the way of us actually maturing. Going after our goals and claiming what it is that we want. I’ve had the beautiful opportunity over the past few months to be in really deep conversation with women, specifically in Hong Kong, as Elaine and I have watched the watcher lead academy and officially kicked off, which is Asia’s first, you know, Women’s Leadership Academy really focused and specific for women in Asia. And what I have taken away from these conversations is the fact that when it comes to going after our goals, we can berate ourselves and feel like something is wrong with us because we can’t quite figure it out, when the truth of the matter is, as women, you know, we hold a lot right, the emotional caretaking that’s required for children, if you have them, parents, if you have them, our communities around us, our teams, our colleagues, our clients.

There’s also the mental load of all the different things that we need to juggle. And so it can be really hard, not just to know what it is that we want, because we’re always thinking about others, but also physically, from a time perspective, to really have the time and space to figure that out and to take the steps to move forward. Now I believe that personal mastery is a core skill that we’re going to need, because life is going to throw a lot more at us as we journey through the years to come. 

Technology has already advanced so much the amount of information that we are processing, the vastness of what we’re experiencing. So in one moment, we might be laughing at an Instagram reel about, for me, it’s like perimenopause. And you know all the things we need to do to stay fit and healthy to you know the horror that we see in certain parts of the world and the deep, deep concern about the fate of the planet and where it’s going, and our nervous systems are honestly not designed to deal with the breadth and depth of the intensity that is out there, and it can be really hard to navigate the world, particularly for those of you who relate to being sensitive and empathetic. So today’s episode is really a rally cry and a bit of a What would I like to call? 

It a reassurance that if you find that everything is quite a lot and that it’s really intense right now, I want you to know that you’re not alone and that you are having a very human experience and acting appropriate. Appropriately to a world out there that is really chaotic and really overwhelming and so first and foremost, nothing has gone wrong. You’re not crazy. You’re not alone. Many people are experiencing the the intensity. Secondly, when it comes to world events, it can feel like, when we come back into our own personal lives, that our problems are really small and they’re insignificant and they don’t matter, because in other parts of the world, it’s even more horrific. And what I’ve come to learn is that, you know, we can live in a paradox and two things can exist at the same time that the world likes to try and put things into binary boxes, where it’s either this or that, but there is so much nuance in the world, and so even though someone is suffering in another country, even though Someone might be going through absolute atrocities. It’s okay for you to feel stressed out about what’s going on in your own life and to worry about, you know, what’s happening immediately in your family life, in your work situation, etc, and so just really seeing you in all the swell and all that you’re carrying, and bringing it back to today’s topic around personal mastery, I really believe that we are being called to deepen these skills of being able to hold the intensity in the world, to still keep an open heart, an empathetic heart to what’s happening, but not collapse into I’m not going to feel my own problems, and I’m not going to let myself fall apart, and I’m not allowed to feel a certain way because other people are suffering, and to build the muscle of holding the contrast of that. And so if you are in a position at the moment where you are feeling like, oh, it’s really overwhelming, and what’s happening to my job, like the all these restructures are happening, am I safe? Where? Where’s my where’s the future of work gonna go in the next couple of years? 

Just, just take a breath with me for a moment. And I mean it, take a deep breath with me. So if it’s safe for you to do so, if you’re driving, please don’t do this, because I’m gonna ask you to close down your eyes, but I’m gonna do this with you, just shutting down your eyes, taking a moment to feel your body resting on whatever you’re resting on. For me, I’m standing at my standing desk, so I’m just going to feel my feet on the ground. But for you, you might be sitting on a chair or a couch and just taking a deep breath in and letting out an exhale or a sigh or sound. So if you want to, you want to, you can open up your eyes, and we’re going to come back, but just take a breath. The breath is actually a really powerful tool to bring us back into a different state, a different state of awareness, and oftentimes it’s the best tool that can help snap us out of that constant worry, anxiety and overwhelm. And I believe that personal mastery really requires us to know how to work with not just our minds, which can take us onto tangents and have us worrying and staying in these worry loops, but equally, our bodies, to be able to somatically experience the stress and frustration and to move that into something else. 

And so personal mastery is something that if you’re thinking, oh my gosh, I don’t know how to navigate the future of work, do I need to learn my AI skills? How can I up level? Absolutely, there’s lots to learn in the world of AI. But come back to you as a human being, because I have learned that. And again, I’ve seen this with women, like we can have the best strategies and use chat, GPT or Claude to help us with a with a thing, but the actual practice of it, the implementation, the embodied confidence around, for example, being able to have a difficult conversation, or being able to enforce a boundary, or being able to put together a presentation. That doesn’t just come from knowing what to do and having a strategy. It comes from when you are deeply in your body, feeling connected, feeling like you’re stretching your edges and still able to hold yourself and move forward and to keep going. And so why I’m talking about personal mastery is that I really encourage you to remember this piece as you think about 2026

if you find you’re getting stuck and you’re in that anxiety loop, maybe you need to learn something to help you with your personal mastery, whether that’s mindset, Shadow Work, embodiment work, there are many different tools out there many different practitioners who do lots of different things. And if you would like my support specifically around your work and navigating the future of work and doing it from this embodied place where your personal mastery is centered, then I would love to invite you to check out pivot pathfinders. That’s a mastermind that I’m running to support women to figure out. Then. Next career step, whether they are to stay and lean into leadership or create something else, and to really explore what that something else might look like. 

And so if you’re interested, just drop me a DM on Instagram or at LinkedIn with the word pivot, and I will be in touch and send you more details. It’s a six month program really designed to support you with a structured curriculum to get really clear on what your next steps are, and to teach you the personal mastery pieces around how to be clear on the mindset that’s keeping you stuck or off track, and to work with your body as it holds you know, the overwhelm and the tension that we see out there in the world, plus the strategy and the action taking that’s required to really test out what that next option is for you. 

And so if you’re interested, you can come and find me, and for more details, come on over to the show notes over at Siobhan barnes.com, forward slash, 145, but I really do want to close this short, sharp episode with a message of, I see you. It’s not easy. It can be challenging. There can be so much good, though, and there’s lots of wonderful things that can unfold, even in the the the absolute chaos that is the world right now. 

And so as you’re navigating the world, you’re seeing you and your tender heart and know that you are not alone. Other people feel what you’re feeling, and that you know you matter as well, and you know we can hold the dichotomy of what’s happening in the world with what’s going on internally, and so just seeing you and holding that delicate, fine balance. So I’ll end that there and wish you a beautiful week, and I want you to remember you are here for a reason beyond merely hustling, grinding and merely surviving, you matter.