I became a butterfly and everybody’s already asking what next?

It struck a chord because it’s a story I hear in boardrooms and coaching rooms week after week. A kind of leadership Groundhog Day. Achieve, accelerate, ascend, only to be immediately asked for the next act, the next strategy, the next version of yourself. The cocoon’s barely off and the world’s already asking you to upgrade your wings.

The world demands us to relentlessly be a this or a that, anything but ourselves.

It’s the tyranny of modern leadership culture: relentless self-optimisation dressed up as ambition, and the subtle shame attached to any suggestion that one might, even for a moment, be enough.

Is ‘Doing’ out of control?

Buddhist psychology names this restlessness, tanha – craving, or thirst. A constant reaching for what’s not yet here, driven by the illusion that the next achievement will deliver lasting satisfaction. Of course, it never does. The dopamine bump fades, and the chase begins again. In Psychology character strategies, this would define the ‘Overfocussed Industrious’ strategy of ‘strive/drive’. Gah, that is so familiar. Do we all have to wait until we are non-execs or chairman until we can rest back into our own authority? When does that stage come?

At comma this spaciousness is at the heart of our work. The ability to step back, create pause, and become aware of what is driving us before we react. A pause that is disappearing from modern executive life where we are rewarded for activity, decisiveness, and visible momentum, even when the wisest move might be stillness, reflection, or an honest ‘I don’t know yet’.

This isn’t just a corporate problem; it’s an internal one too.

The parts that keep us running

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), we understand that our personalities are made up of parts, each carrying beliefs and burdens shaped by our history. Many of us have parts that equate relentless productivity with safety. I see them all the time: the Driver, the Perfectionist, the Inner Critic who whispers that pausing is weakness, or the Protector who believes slowing down risks irrelevance.

These parts aren’t bad; they’ve often kept us afloat in tough environments. But when they take over, our lives may start to feel increasingly performative, as though we have to be a ‘someone’ who is curated for admiration, driven by anxiety, and estranged from genuine authenticity and ease.

One investment banker I coached named it beautifully:

“It’s like I’m chasing a finish line someone moves every time I get close. And the worst part is, I’m often the one moving it.”

At the beginning of a New Year

When we are flooded with resolutions and goals and calls to be our best selves, what if instead of asking: what next? we asked: what now? And created a Radical Act of Enough.

What if leadership was less about engineering constant improvement and more about cultivating presence, the capacity to meet this moment fully, without immediately plotting its upgrade?

The dharma reminds us that being precedes doing. In fact, wise action arises from clear being. Without that spaciousness, our actions are just reactions, old parts running old scripts in new suits.

In the coaching room, this sometimes means helping clients turn towards those relentless parts with curiosity, not contempt. Asking them:

• What are you afraid would happen if you stopped?
  
• Whose voice are you really hearing when you say you can’t slow down?
  
• What might emerge if you didn’t fill this space immediately?
  

Maybe the butterfly doesn’t need a five-year plan

Of course, strategy and ambition have their place. But the healthiest leaders I know have learned to weave being into doing, to let go of the fantasy of arrival, and instead cultivate a kind of winged spaciousness.

They can say, “I became a butterfly.” And instead of anxiously flapping off to the next cocoon, they rest on a branch, stretch their wings, feel the sun, and notice the air.

They ask themselves:

• What part of me is chasing?
  
• What part of me is tired?
  
• And what in me, right now, is already whole?
  

Perhaps the most radical act in leadership today isn’t to set a bolder target, but to declare:

I’m here, this is enough for now.

And then, only then, see what arises, I bet your bottom dollar it will be something more meaningful, wiser and more authentic.

Which part of you is chasing, seeking, striving?

And what might happen if you didn’t fill this space immediately?

Feature Image Credit: Photo by Vivek Doshi on Unsplash