When Leadership Stops Performing and Starts Remembering
Why modern women leaders are turning to ancient practices to redefine growth, success, and power
For a long time, I believed growth as a leader meant expansion. More responsibility. Greater influence. Wider impact. And by every conventional measure, I was growing. I spent over two decades inside demanding corporate environments, including 23 years with The Ritz-Carlton, where I served as Corporate Director of Culture Transformation and worked with Fortune 500 companies on how to build cultures that perform under pressure.
From the outside, it looked like success.
From the inside, my body was quietly collapsing.
True growth did not arrive through another promotion or achievement. It arrived through burnout. Through depression. Through the disorienting moment when the identity I had built around excellence no longer held me together.
This is where many women leaders find themselves today, though few feel permitted to name it. We are taught that leadership growth is linear: gain skills, earn credibility, rise. But no one prepares us for the moment when external success no longer compensates for internal misalignment—when the nervous system is exhausted, when the mask becomes too heavy, when the question shifts from How do I succeed? to Who am I becoming?
My healing did not begin with a new strategy. It began with stillness. Mindfulness and meditation became the first practices that helped me regulate my nervous system and hear what had long been drowned out by performance. That path eventually led me to work with shamans and explore plant medicine—not as a trend, but as a sincere search for understanding.
What emerged was not what I expected.
The deeper work revealed that my pain was not rooted in corporate pressure alone, but in childhood experiences I had learned to outrun through achievement. My perfectionism, resilience, and hyper-responsibility had once protected me. Over time, they became the source of my exhaustion. Ancient traditions have always known this truth: what is not faced will continue to lead.
Across cultures, leadership was never separated from inner work. Before one was entrusted to guide others, one was taught to sit with oneself—to listen, to observe patterns, to regulate emotion, to understand fear before wielding authority. Ritual, reflection, and connection to nature were not spiritual luxuries; they were leadership disciplines.
Modern women are being called back to these practices not because they are mystical, but because they are practical.
Ancient wisdom teaches regulation before reaction, presence before performance, alignment before action. These are not outdated ideas. They are exactly what today’s complex, high-pressure leadership environments require. Ironically, this mirrors what I taught organizations for years.
In my work with Fortune 500 companies, we emphasized that culture cannot be imposed. While leadership example sets the tone, culture only becomes real when people are involved in shaping the work that affects them. Participation creates ownership. Ownership creates commitment. And commitment is what sustains culture under pressure.
The same principle applies to personal leadership growth. When women attempt to lead without involving their inner world, growth becomes performative. We look capable but feel fragmented. We hold responsibility but carry unprocessed fear. We lead teams but abandon ourselves.
Ancient practices offer a different model—one that invites integration rather than perfection. One that teaches leaders how to pause, recalibrate, and respond instead of react. Practices such as intentional stillness, embodied awareness, cyclical rest, and reflective inquiry allow women to lead from coherence rather than depletion.
This is not about rejecting ambition. It is about redefining growth.
True growth is integration—the ability to lead without self-abandonment, to succeed without numbing, to build cultures at work and at home that are sustainable, humane, and alive.
When I eventually left a secure and lucrative corporate role to take a risk on myself, it was not a career move. It was a return. That decision became the foundation of my work today through Awaken Inner Courage, a space where modern leadership meets ancient remembering.
Women have always carried this wisdom. The challenge is not learning something new, but remembering what we already know.
The future of leadership will not belong to those who perform the best. It will belong to those who are the most integrated.
And that remembering begins within.
