“If I go on vacation again in a few weeks, my employees will kill me.” I grin at the person across from me. “Find the mistake.” The CEO of a company with over 245 employees nods. “If I don’t work, they don’t work either.” So… who is working for whom here?
That’s what happens when you work for your employees instead of the other way around. This phenomenon often occurs when you’re promoted from employee to leader—or when you’re simply too nice for this world.
The same applies to service providers, where some people feel the hierarchy is somehow reversed. Your tax advisor. Your lawyer. Your accountant. They all work for you—and ultimately, they don’t get to make your decisions. They are there to advise you. That’s what you hired them for. But you make the final call.
Yet many entrepreneurs, leaders, and people become overly obedient to these “authorities.”
“That’s not possible” is simply accepted—instead of saying: “You work for me—and I don’t accept ‘that’s not possible.’ Find a way.”
The same is true for your brain. When did the servant become the king? Because if you look closely, you often believe what that voice in your head tells you. “Oh, this could go wrong,” you hear that inner voice say. And just like that—you don’t do it. But whose voice is that, really? And why should you always listen to it? Your brain is designed to keep you safe. It draws on all your past experiences—everything you’ve ever lived and learned. In my case, that’s 49 years of life experience. Great.
But what if you’ve had a negative experience before? In business, in love, with your finances?
It probably hurt. And your brain remembered that. It wants to protect you—so it warns you about potential “danger.” If you enter every new relationship with the fear from the last one, it often fails before it even begins. I once saw a postcard that said: “Love as if you’ve never been hurt. Dance as if no one is watching. And live as if you only had this one day.”
So maybe it’s time to stop believing everything you hear “up there.” Because what if it works out? What if your idea succeeds—regardless of what your past has shown you so far?
If you quit before you even start, you definitely won’t take a single step forward—and everything stays exactly the same.
So maybe it’s time to gently put that voice back in its place—and go for it again, with full energy, joy, and commitment. And if your employees would “kill you” for taking time for yourself, then that’s exactly where something needs to change. These are topics for a 1:1 coaching or a keynote within your company. Because the mind that created the problem cannot solve it on its own. If it already knew what to do, it would have done it by now.
That’s why we all need new input, new perspectives—so real change can happen. If you need support, I’m here for you. Just write me.
