Finding Your Way Back to You: When Career Success Becomes Disconnection

Eleanor Mills’ Interview

There are those turning points in our careers. They may feel hellish at the time, but looking back you realise the intense learning that came from them.

These are the before-and-after markers - proof of how far you've come.

Perhaps it's a creeping awareness that you aren't enjoying your work as much as you did, the role you worked so hard to earn no longer reflects who you are. That rather than expanding you, it feels like it's limiting your influence.

Or it may come, as for some of my clients, through burnout, illness or losing your job.

I interviewed the wonderful Eleanor Mills the other day for my book. She is a case in point. Her nadir became her watershed moment for personal and career transformation when she lost her job.

In her own words: "I felt like I died…I wrote about it... I had about 10,000 people get in touch with me from that piece, saying that they felt the same way too, and nobody talks about redundancy. It's a bit like death like that."

Eleanor's experience reveals a profound disconnection that many high-achieving women face - the disconnect from their authentic selves. As she reflects: "I think a lot of us have carried our brains, a bit like we carry our heads around on a stick. So I think as women … we've been very unconnected to our bodies and we've also been very much taught the kind of cogito ergo sum."

This disconnection manifests in what Eleanor calls living in "the achievement excitement matrix" - constantly seeking the next dopamine hit of success while losing touch with deeper knowing:

"Maybe a bit of looking attractive because that kind of helps you get the door open, but really not being encouraged to sink into deeper knowing, intuition, or even a kind of more solid sense of self."

The turning point came when she realised: "I really think that the work of midlife is this ‘becoming piece’. And this is a kind of moving beyond the rather brittle achievement excitement matrix into something which feels a lot more solid, which is the capacity to self-soothe, to be kind to oneself."

Through her platform, Noon, she's now helping midlife women step into their confidence and power, summing up her transformation in the following words: "I think I'm much more calm; much more humble; I'm much more kind, and much happier."

This is what we espouse at Vermillion - that midlife women understand their value and learn to prioritise what is good for them whilst finding their authentic voice.

That's where our coaching becomes a game-changer. We help you find the stillness to hear your own voice of confidence - and the humility to listen to others.