The Hardest Advice to Take is Usually Your Own

Being kind to yourself is something I talk about constantly.

Back at my desk today. Seven weeks, three countries, three generations and one very overdue lesson in practising what I preach. I write this for anyone in the HR community who gives everything to others and very little to themselves.

In over twenty years working alongside the HR community, I have sat with CPOs and senior leaders at some of the most challenging moments of their careers. Redundancy, unexpected career change, uncertainty about what comes next. The professional impact is always visible, but what is often underestimated is the personal toll. My counsel has always been the same. Pause, be kind to yourself and invest in your wellbeing as deliberately as you have invested in your career.

So this year, I took my own advice.

Seven weeks travelling through Europe, the longest break I have taken in my professional life, and one that took eight months of planning and genuine commitment to make happen. Aged care responsibilities at home do not pause because you want to travel, and real life rarely makes these decisions straightforward. But I made it happen and I am glad I did. We averaged 27,000 steps a day, not by design, simply because there was always something worth walking towards.

It began with two weeks in Rome with our children and grandchildren, three generations navigating the same cobblestones, the same heat and the same overwhelming sense of history coming in from every direction. Standing at the Trevi Fountain surrounded by our grandchildren was one of those moments that simply stops you completely.

What stayed with me most though was the ancient architecture. Italy is not new to us, but this time I stopped, really stopped. Standing inside the Colosseum, I kept asking myself the same question. How did they even conceive of this, let alone build it? No technology, no modern engineering, no global supply chains. Just human vision, ingenuity and an unshakeable belief in what was possible. And so much of it is still standing. It made me reflect on how much we have available to us today and yet how often we find ourselves overwhelmed rather than empowered by it.

I came home with a clear head, renewed energy and an even stronger commitment to the community I have spent so many years alongside. The HR leaders and executives I work with give an enormous amount of themselves, to their organisations, their teams and the people around them, and they are often the last to apply to themselves the very counsel they give to others. I see it constantly and for a long time I was doing exactly the same thing.

If you are a senior HR leader reading this and wondering what comes next, I would ask you to consider this. The most authentic and rewarding next chapter rarely lands in your lap. It requires a willingness to look beyond the comfortable and the familiar, to genuinely consider what different could look like and to trust yourself enough to know that different does not mean less valuable, less challenged or less fulfilled. Often it means the opposite.

Investing in yourself does not require a passport. It simply requires a decision.

It does not have to be seven weeks in Europe. It could be a morning, an afternoon, a conversation with someone you trust. It looks different for everyone: rest, movement, time with people who matter or simply giving yourself permission to lift your head and think beyond tomorrow.

I will leave you with one question. When did you last deliberately invest in yourself? Not your team, not your organisation, not the next role; but the thinking, the rest, the relationships and the clarity that gets you there.

I would genuinely like to know.