Three Years Later: What Leaving Taught Me About Ambition

Three years ago this week, I left Accenture.

At the time, I thought leaving would be the hardest part.

It wasn't.

The decision itself had taken years to reach. By the time I handed in my resignation, I knew it was the right thing to do. I had thought through the financial implications, the practicalities, and what needed to happen next.

What I couldn't plan for was everything that came after.

I left because I wanted more freedom, better health and a career more aligned to purpose.

Those values had become impossible to ignore.

I was successful by most external measures. I'd spent more than two decades building a career I was proud of. I'd led large teams, delivered complex transformations, and held leadership positions many people aspire to.

But my body was telling a different story.

Sleep had become a challenge.

Palpitations had become normal.

Pressure was just always there. I think my nervous system had forgotten what peace felt like.

The irony is that when you're surrounded by high performers, these things can become surprisingly easy to rationalise.

You tell yourself it's just a busy period.

You tell yourself things will settle down after the next project, promotion, target, or deadline.

You convince yourself that enduring pressure is the same thing as being resilient.

It took me a long time to understand that those are not the same thing.

Endurance is carrying on despite the cost.

Resilience is being able to carry the load without breaking yourself in the process.

In reality, I was exceptionally good at endurance.

It took a few hard lessons in resilience to realise I wasn’t as resilient as I thought I was.

One of the most surprising things after I left wasn't the loss of structure or status.

It was how much I struggled to deal with the silence.

For more than twenty years, my diary had largely dictated my days. There were always meetings to attend, problems to solve, and people who needed something from me.

Then suddenly there was space in my diary.

And while space sounds wonderful in theory, it gets really uncomfortable when you've built your identity around being busy.

So much of my self-worth had become tied to achievement, productivity, and being needed.

Without those things, I had to answer a more difficult question.

Who was I when nobody needed me to fix something?

Given a blank page, what would I choose? What did I love?

Most of all, what did ambition mean in a world where I wasn’t constantly proving it?

For most of my career, ambition looked like long hours, stretch targets, constant growth, and relentless responsibility.

If I wasn't working fourteen-hour days, was I really working hard enough?

If I wasn't pushing harder, was I still ambitious?

Three years later, those questions seem almost foreign.

I haven't become less ambitious; I’ve just learned that ambition and self-sacrifice are not the same thing.

Today, ambition includes health.

It includes relationships.

It includes creating work that feels meaningful.

It includes having enough capacity to enjoy the life I'm building.

It also includes joy.

Not the kind reserved for holidays or milestones.

The kind that shows up in ordinary moments.

Slow mornings.

Time with my dog.

Walks in the sunshine.

The ability to step away from my laptop in the middle of the day without feeling guilty.

An afternoon conversation with a coaching client.

The freedom to choose how I spend my time.

Three years ago, I didn’t realise how much of that had disappeared from my life.

When I left corporate, I didn't have a detailed blueprint for what the next chapter would look like.

I had a financial plan and had done the training on a potential back-up career.

But beyond that, I was guided more by values than certainty.

Freedom.

Health.

Service.

Whenever I faced a decision, I asked which option moved me closer to those values.

That approach shaped everything that followed.

One step led to another.

One conversation led to another.

One opportunity created space for the next.

Eventually those steps became a coaching business, board roles, speaking opportunities, and a life that feels far more aligned with the values I was seeking when I left.

Last week, I received what would once have seemed like a very strange measure of success.

My doctor gave me a gold star.

Blood pressure perfect.

Cholesterol perfect.

No sign of the palpitations that had once become routine.

Mammogram done.

Dentist done.

Physio still a work in progress (don’t underestimate the damage years of sitting behind a laptop can do. My physiotherapist remains mildly horrified by just how much tension one human can accumulate).

Dietician still a work in progress (the gold star doesn’t come without changing what we put in our bodies).

Three years ago, I probably wouldn't have celebrated those things.

Today, they feel like some of the most meaningful measures of success I have.

Three years on, the biggest lesson isn't that I had the courage to leave.

It's that I didn't need all the answers before I did.

I simply needed to know the direction I wanted to move in.

The path revealed itself one decision at a time.

And if there's one thing I've learned, it's this:

Sometimes clarity doesn't come before the first step.

Sometimes it comes because you took it.