The Phoenix Leap - Career Coaching For Women 40+, The Hague (2026)

30/05/2026

Some evenings leave you energized, inspired, and with plenty of food for thought.🔥

Yesterday, I attended a book event at the American Book Center in The Hague with Lisa Rassaei, celebrating the launch of her new book, Leading Through the Shadows.

One concept that particularly resonated with me was the Window of Tolerance and how our nervous system influences the way we communicate, make decisions, build trust, and lead - often more than we realize!

It was also wonderful to reconnect with Lisa. We first met at a conference in 2018, and it has been inspiring to see her growth and the impact she continues to create through her work. Her warmth, openness, and authenticity made the evening even more special 💛

I left with valuable insights that I will certainly bring into my work with women leaders - supporting them in showing up with confidence, finding their voice, increasing their visibility, and stepping into their authority with greater ease and authenticity.

➡️ If you're interested in leadership, personal growth, emotional intelligence, or understanding the deeper human dynamics that shape the way we lead and connect with others, I highly recommend Lisa Rassaei's book Leading Through the Shadows.

Congratulations, Lisa, on this wonderful achievement, and thank you for such an inspiring evening.

29/05/2026

𝐋𝐞𝐭 𝐦𝐞 𝐛𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐝𝐨 - 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭! 💫
I'm not the coach who helps you run better meetings, delegate more effectively, or think through your next organizational strategy. Could I? Probably. But there are coaches out there who live and breathe exactly that, and they're great at it. That's not my lane.

What I work on happens before all of that. It's the layer most coaches skip, and the one that changes everything!

I work on Presence. Voice. Authority. Behaviour. Personal brand. And the mindset underneath all of it, because how you show up on the outside is always a reflection of what you believe about yourself on the inside. And that's my 𝐏𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐑! 🔥

You know the feeling. You walk into a room, and something in you quietly wonders whether you'll be taken seriously. You sit in a meeting with the right answer, and something stops you from saying it out loud. A promotion goes to someone louder - not more experienced, not more qualified, just somehow more visible. You leave a conversation and realize you softened yourself down again, apologized before you'd even begun, and asked when you should have stated.

And that is not a competence problem. That is a 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 problem. And presence 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐭!

And this is exactly the work I do with women who know they have more to give than they are currently showing and are done pretending that's fine. Women who are tired of walking out of rooms knowing they held back, stayed quiet, or made themselves smaller than the moment required. Women who are ready to finally show up as the leader they already are on the inside!

𝐖𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐨𝐧:

✦ The inner authority and self-perception that makes everything else possible - from "I hope they take me seriously" to "I know what I bring."
✦ How you physically show up and what your behavior signals before you say a single word.
✦ How your voice carries, or doesn't, when the stakes are high
✦ The communication patterns and language habits that are quietly costing you credibility.
✦ How you show up in high-stakes moments: meetings, presentations, rooms that weren't designed to hear you.
✦ Your personal brand - what people say about you when you're not in the room, and whether it reflects who you actually are.
✦ Your energy and boundaries, because you cannot project authority from a place of depletion.
✦ And if you're in transition - a career shift, a reinvention, a new chapter - how to carry visible confidence through the change, not only after it.

💬 If you read this and felt something - that quiet, yes, that's me - that feeling is worth a conversation.

My calendar is open. Let's talk about where you are and what becomes possible from here. The free consultation link is in the comments.

19/05/2026

𝐀 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 - she thought she was asking for career advice. What she actually needed was permission to become herself again. 🚀

Emily came to me a few months ago - exhausted, stuck, buried in corporate pharma that was extracting everything and giving nothing back. No vision. No energy. Just that suffocating feeling that something was deeply wrong.

I didn't hand her a framework. I let her talk. Within minutes, she said, "I don't recognize myself anymore." And then everything poured out. Years in senior management, living someone else's ambition, fulfilling her family's expectations, constantly alert, and meeting the industry's demands at a pace that required her to sacrifice sleep, peace, and herself. COVID cracked it wide open.

She looked around and saw:
✔️ An environment that was destroying her.
✔️ Products she no longer believed in.
✔️ Values that had completely shifted.
✔️ A life that no longer felt like hers.

Too ashamed to tell anyone & carrying it alone.

So I pushed. Hard. We stripped away the shame, the comparisons, the external expectations, and went back to her - her strengths, her values, and a vision of who she has become. What years of real leadership had actually built.

Session by session, she stopped shrinking. She started naming what she genuinely wanted:
✔️ Work that brings joy.
✔️ A pace that doesn't destroy her.
✔️ Legacy beyond revenue.

And then, one day, she said, "So where do we start?" That is always the turn. Emily left pharma and moved into the NGO world - different pace, different people, work that finally aligns with who she is NOW. It took courage to walk away from the salary, the status, and, I would say, the golden handcuffs.

But she did it! She identified her transferable skills, conducted extensive research, realigned with her purpose, leveraged her network, with an open heart analyzed feedback from others, and embraced the unknown!

🔥 Now? Peaceful. Fulfilled. Sleeping again and recognizing herself again!

And this is, my dears, what thrills me about my work: seeing people regain their joy, peace of mind, and sense of fulfillment. Every single time. 🙏

If you heard yourself in Emily's story, come and see how I work.
👉 The Phoenix Leap Coaching Program - link in the comments.
Your next chapter is waiting!

12/05/2026

It is 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤, so I will take any excuse to talk about the work I love most 😉 Not because I have all the answers but because this - supporting people, inspiring them to grow & pushing them to change - has always been my most natural thing. 🔥 Long before it was my profession, it was just how I operated - the energy, the intuition, the genuine belief that the person in front of me is capable of more than they are currently allowing themselves. And that never switches off!

And over the years, I have seen firsthand what happens when someone stops waiting for life to rearrange itself and decides to move. And it works - Every. Single. Time!

I have helped hundreds of clients pivot careers they'd outgrown, rebuild confidence quietly chipped away, and communicate in ways that finally matched who they actually are. We have worked on relationships - at work and at home - because how you show up in one room affects how you show up in all of them! I have watched women step into leadership roles they'd been quietly ready for, sometimes for years, and finally stop second-guessing that readiness!

None of it was easy. But all of it was worth it! And I am proud of it!

➡️ Here is what I know after years of doing this: most people are not stuck because they lack talent. They are stuck because they can't see themselves clearly! And you can't read the label on the inside of the bottle. That's where I come in 🚀

🗨️ If you have been sitting on that quiet voice that says something needs to change - this week, let it be louder! DM me & let's find out what is actually possible for you - looking forward to hearing your story.

08/05/2026

I am not going to 𝐋𝐈𝐄 to you. And I hope you’ll 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 lying to yourself. 🔥

For almost three years, I was invisible, not to the world, to myself!

I shut down my first people development business after seven years. Built in a country that wasn’t mine, in a language that wasn’t mine, while raising two small children & trying to prove - to everyone, including myself - that I could make it work! But it didn’t work as I anticipated. I closed it. And then I did what every ambitious woman does when she falls: I pretended I was fine and kept moving!

✦ Over 60 job interviews - four rounds in the same company (last!) - ending with a GM who told me that I bring a wealth of experience & insight but didn’t fit the team
✦ Burnout I didn’t recognize
✦ A slight depression I didn’t name
✦ I was numbing myself in ways I wasn’t proud of & I called it 𝐂𝐎𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐆!

I withdrew. I stopped reaching out. Because underneath all the credentials, certifications and achievements, I was ashamed!

Ashamed that I had failed - the woman people described as magnetic, as a powerhouse, as someone whose energy changes a room - couldn’t figure out how to get back up.🤷‍♀️

Here is what nobody told me then & what I now tell every woman who sits across from me:

✦ You are not lost
✦ You are in the uncomfortable space between who you were & who you are becoming
✦ And no one prepares you for how disorienting that feels!

What turned it around was not a strategy. Not a framework. One brutal TRUTH: the version of me that got me here can no longer take me there❗️And I had been abandoning myself for years trying to keep that version alive.

I stopped ✦ I rebuilt ✦ Unapologetically ME ✦ Unstoppable🚀

I returned to what I love - working with women who are done carrying a version of themselves that no longer fits, who have the guts to REALLY decide that what comes next will finally be on their own terms!

Because REINVENTION is only half the work, the other half is LEADERSHIP PRESENCE - showing up with the clarity, authority & visibility that finally matches who you have become. Not who you were expected to be but who you actually are!

Because getting up, reinventing yourself, and owning your leadership presence? That is not just a woman 40+ story. That is a 𝐇𝐔𝐌𝐀𝐍 story & it starts with ONE DECISION!

I have Mel Robbins on my phone wallpaper. Not because I worship her, but because she was buried under shame, depression & heavy drinking before she found her voice & walked onto stages in front of thousands! She reminds me every single day:

✦ You don’t wait until you feel ready
✦ You decide..and then
✦ You move!

And now, at 48, I am just getting started🚀

➡️ If you are reading this at midnight, questioning everything, exhausted from carrying a version of yourself that no longer fits - Get up! The world is waiting for you!

📩 If this reached you - don’t wait! DM me.

10/04/2026

𝐈𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝟒𝟎𝐬, shaping your 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 is not only about what to do. It’s also about how firmly you hold a direction once it starts to form.

I was recently listening to 𝐓𝐨𝐦 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐲’s Patriots Hall of Fame speech, and one thing stayed with me: you don’t have to be special - you have to start, be consistent, determined, and willing to work for it. 𝐍𝐎 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐂𝐔𝐓𝐒.

🔥 That lands differently when you are not at the beginning anymore. At this stage, there is often a clear sense that something no longer fits.

What comes next is not always immediately obvious - it takes thinking, space, and honest reflection to shape a direction that actually makes sense.

And once that direction begins to form, something else comes into play: you take everything into account - consequences, timing, what depends on you.🔥

𝐈𝐭 becomes more measured. More reasonable. More aligned with everything else that needs to hold.

It makes sense. And yet, over time, it can reduce the very shift that was needed in the first place.

I know this space well. I’ve been there, and I see it in the women I work with. This is not hesitation - it’s 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭, 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 decision-making. And it comes with a 𝐜𝐨𝐬𝐭.⤵️

Because the more a direction is shaped to fit everything, the less space it has to actually unfold ❗

This is where consistency takes on a different meaning - not as pushing, but as the ability to:

✦ 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 long enough for it to take shape
✦ 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝 when it stretches, when it feels uncertain
✦ 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝 without immediate confirmation.

No shortcuts. Just 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲, 𝐝𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, and staying with it long enough for something real to emerge 🚀

💬 What are you still adjusting instead of committing?

______________________________________

💫 I support professional women 40+ in reinventing their careers and stepping into their next chapter with clarity, confidence and leadership presence.

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✦ Share it with someone who might need it.

09/04/2026

My advice: Tap to your potential & master it! 🔥
As Oprah said: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” 💪💛🙏

The world needs you the

08/04/2026

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠!

I see this in my work very often: women who have built serious careers (years of experience, real responsibility, solid results, network, etc.), and yet they reach a point where things stop moving. Not because they have done something wrong, but because what used to create momentum no longer does❗

For a long time, the deal was simple:

✦ you delivered
✦ you stayed consistent
✦ you played your role well, and the system responded, right?

It gave you:

✦ direction
✦ structure
✦ a sense that if you kept going, something would open...

𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐧𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬.

What we observe is that the market has shifted in a way that’s easy to describe and much harder to internalize. It’s no longer about how much you do - it’s about how you think, how you decide, how you position yourself.

𝐀𝐈 is only accelerating this, not by replacing people entirely, but by raising the bar for what it means to be relevant - and this is where I see many women hesitate. They keep doing what has always worked, they put in more effort, stay reliable, wait for clarity, and assume the next step will appear if they hold the line.

𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞🤷‍♀️

What used to be a path is now something you have to define yourself in. And this is the shift most people were probably never taught to make - moving from fitting into a structure to consciously shaping 𝐇𝐎𝐖 you are seen and 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 you are going.

And that is not a career move but a change in how you operate. It’s about deciding without waiting, speaking before you feel fully ready, and positioning yourself before someone else does it for you (I know, it can be daunting, but still NON-NEGOTIABLE!) And this is where leadership actually begins - not as a role, but as a way of functioning. I say this very directly to my clients, and I will say it here again as well:

𝐍𝐎 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮❗

The system won’t reorganize itself around your career, and the longer you wait for things to become clear again, the more distance you create between where you are and where the market is already moving. My dear, and you don’t need to panic - you do need to respond🔥

➡️ Where do you feel this shift the most right now - direction, visibility, or perhaps confidence?

🗨️ And if you are at that point where you know something has to change but you can’t quite see how yet - we should talk (link in the comments).

05/04/2026

I wish you space to reflect, reset,
and step into what’s next with clarity and quiet confidence 💛 Peaceful Easter 🙏

03/04/2026

If your answer to “what’s next?” is still unclear - it’s not a timing problem. It’s a 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦.

In the conversations I’m having, this is exactly where things get real. Not theoretical, not inspirational - REAL 🔥 The market is moving fast, roles are shifting, expectations are changing, and many of you are standing in between what you’ve built so far and what is actually needed 𝐍𝐎𝐖!

And the hesitation is not about capability. It’s about 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞!

Because modern reskilling is uncomfortable, it forces you to stop seeing yourself through your role and start seeing yourself through your skills and the value you can create today.

✅ It means shifting from role-based to skill-based thinking. You stop saying “this is my position” and start asking “what do I actually bring that matters now?”
✅ It means you stop learning in advance and start learning in context - just-in-time, when something is needed, used, or tested.
✅ It means you stop treating your experience as something fixed and start stacking it differently, combining what you already know with what is emerging, so you expand where and how you can play.
✅ It means you recognize that your skills are transferable, but only if you actively translate them into new environments rather than waiting for someone else to see it.
✅ And most importantly, it means you understand that this is not a one-time effort. This is continuous - you don’t “arrive” and stay relevant. You stay in motion! YES, in motion (whether you like it or not)!

This is why courage becomes 𝐧𝐨𝐧-𝐧𝐞𝐠𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞!

Because at some point, you have to let go of the version of yourself that made sense before, but is no longer enough for where things are going 💪
You have to move before you feel ready, show up before it feels natural, and build something that reflects today’s reality - not yesterday’s success!
Otherwise, the fear about your professional future doesn’t go away. It stays, no matter how much you think or plan.

Reskilling is not changing your job - t’s changing your skill set faster than the market changes. And the only real question is whether you are willing to do that consciously or wait until you’re forced to 🧐

💬 I don’t do surface-level work. If you’re ready to rethink your direction, your value, and how you show up - DM me or schedule a call (link in the comments)⬇️

_____________________________________

💫 I support professional women 40+ in reinventing their careers and stepping into their next chapter with clarity, confidence and leadership presence.

✦ Leave a reaction - let me know you’re here.
✦ Not connected yet? Feel free to reach out.
✦ Save this post if you’d like to revisit it later.
✦ Share it with someone who might need it.

The Phoenix Leap - Career Coaching For Women 40+

30/05/2026

29/05/2026

19/05/2026

12/05/2026

08/05/2026

10/04/2026

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