What no one tells you about achieving the goal 🌫️
The real work isn't always in the climb. Sometimes, it's learning how to rest without needing to rush.
There’s a certain kind of high that comes after a triumph.
You feel it in your bones a pulse of energy, clarity, aliveness. You’ve arrived. You did it. All the hours, the effort, the relentless pursuit, suddenly worth it. The view is wide, the heart is open, and for a fleeting moment, you’re on top of the world.
That’s exactly how I felt three weeks ago, standing at the finish line of the Mt. Fuji Trail Race. 70 kilometers through the mountains of Japan. Nearly 4,000 meters of elevation. My biggest physical and mental push to date.
Wrecked yet elated.
The kind of experience that rearranges something in you. Not in a cinematic, breakthrough moment but slowly, like fog lifting off a lake at first light. Quiet. Unshakeable. Real.
When I crossed the finish line, I felt everything at once: awe, fatigue, pride, a kind of wordless clarity. The kind that only shows up when you’ve gone far beyond what you thought you could do.
But here’s the part no one talks about: That peak feeling, the one I worked so hard for, didn’t last.
Within days, it was gone. What took months of training and heart to build dissolved faster than I could’ve imagined. And in its place, a quiet emptiness arrived.
Not despair. Just a gentle, unnameable ache.
A sense of what now?
A recognition that the thing I’d poured so much of myself into… was over.
Even with a new goal set for next year, something still felt missing.
This in-between space, the stretch between the peak and the next climb feels harder to hold than the challenge itself.
And yet, it’s so familiar. I see the same thing in business:
A founder sells the company.
The revenue goal is reached.
The big vision lands, and the market finally says yes...
We expect to feel whole. Free. On top of the world.
And for a moment we do.
But then it fades.
And often, it fades faster than the time, energy, and identity it took to get there.
The question shifts from “How do I get there?” to “What do I do now?”
This space, the one between summits, can feel disorienting.
We’re not in action. We’re not in crisis. We’re not in celebration either. We’re just… in it.
So what do we do with that space?
Not the peak. Not the next push.
But the in-between, that strange moment where we are no longer who we were, but not yet who we’re becoming.
Because this moment is real. And it matters.
In my work, I often challenge my clients to set big audacious goals.
To climb the mountain.
To test their limits.
To lead with purpose, not just ambition.
But what we don’t talk about enough, not in business, not in life, is what happens after the summit.
The part where the world goes quiet.
Where no one’s watching.
Where the feeling you worked so hard for… doesn’t stay.
This isn’t failure. It isn’t emptiness. It might just be the most human part of the journey.
Our culture rarely honors this space.
But I do.
And I help my clients live here too, not with urgency, but with curiosity.
Because maybe mastery, in business, in leadership, in life is learning to be as present in the pause as we are in the pursuit.
So if you're in that space after a triumph, before the next climb — I see you.
This isn’t a gap to fill.
It’s ground to stand on.
And the way you meet this moment might just shape the clarity, creativity, and energy you carry into whatever comes next.
Love,
Louise
