Wait, did I choose the wrong career?!
Many of us hit a moment in our lives where we ask: is this really it? There might be a sense of having more to give, but not knowing what exactly. Or a fear you haven't got what it takes, but not knowing how to solve that.
In these times of systemic collapse, it feels urgent to get it right - to not waste any more time.
I wanted to share my own moment like that and make two points. First, that it's worth zooming out and seeing the bigger picture before rushing to a fix. And secondly, that doubting what simply is keeps us blind to what's actually available to us.
In the photo you see me in the Kalahari, South Africa, 2003. I had been invited to spend a few weeks following habituated meerkats through the desert. The animals were not tame, but conditioned with a certain humming sound, to trust the tall bipeds who made that sound. They were also quick to learn that our height made a useful lookout post for predators. The picture shows me relaxing at the end of the day, by the burrow, eating an apple, with two meerkats climbing on top of me. Honestly, I was in heaven.
For as long as I can remember, I was hyper-focused on anything to do with animals. I dreamt about them. I wanted to hang with them, learn about them, rescue them. I had always assumed my whole career would be animal related. It didn't go that way. Though I studied Zoology and started my career at an animal rescue centre, I moved into communications, into different causes, and away from animals.
A couple of decades later, in the years leading up to Impact Sweet Spot, I found myself asking: have I taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way — is that why something feels slightly off?
So, I started to ask myself questions. What is my greatest passion? What did I love as a child? What do I care about most?
Animals. Wildlife. Always. And with biodiversity collapsing, and the severe abuse happening in the meat and dairy industry, in research labs — there is more than enough changemaking to do in that space. So, wait. Had I wasted two decades?
But as I kept looking, something else started to emerge. I began to remember things I had dismissed or forgotten. My philosophical streak. My fascination with human behaviour. My instinct to look for the root cause of social problems rather than their symptoms. And, going even further back, the fact that I had once very much wanted to be a psychologist.
These threads were pointing exactly where I had ended up.
But what followed was a deeper insight — and this is my second point. Looking back at what had felt like random choices, I realised they could never have gone any other way.
Not because "everything happens for a reason" in some neat, predesigned sense — but because each step in your life is shaped by everything at that moment: your circumstances, the environment, your fears, your blind spots, the people and dynamics around you. Ending the argument with all of that — the doubt, the self-recrimination, believing it should be another way — creates more space than any perfectly articulated plan will.
The two points I wanted to make are really one and the same thing. When you zoom out and see your whole journey — not just the moment you're stuck in — and when you stop arguing with how it has unfolded, something settles. You're no longer spending your energy fighting the question. And from there, you can start to see what's actually here, what's available, and what direction makes sense.
That's what led me to build Impact Sweet Spot: not just to address the stuckness in front of you, but to offer a wider, deeper lens. A way of seeing your whole arc, inside and out. And with a positive bias for what has worked, what has flowed, what has come naturally. (The negative bias is, in most of us, a big fat muscle that's had way too much exercise already.)
As for the animals — something tells me they will find their way back into my life in a more significant way. The thought warms my cockles. If that happens, it will be at a perfect time.
