Change Starts With You
It was like standing in my power for the first timeAnd I almost didn’t do it.
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I was the Chief Executive of a local Mind Association in the North East of England. It was my first real leadership role — and if I’m honest, I arrived in it before I felt ready. But then, how do any of us know we’re ready for something without taking that leap of faith?
I look back on that job with a lot of love. It shaped me in ways I’m still discovering. But there was one night in particular that changed everything — not just professionally, but in the way I understood myself.
Our AGM was approaching. Every year, we’d follow the same format. I’d stand up, deliver a short speech on our achievements, and then hand over to a guest speaker to bring the real sparkle. The trouble was — and I say this as gently as I can — the guest speakers often arrived with their own agenda. Their own story. Their own message. And it left my colleagues, our volunteers, and the people we served feeling a little bemused. A little disconnected. Like the evening hadn’t quite honoured the work we were all doing together.
I didn’t want another year to go by like that.
The discomfort of staying the same had finally become greater than the fear of doing something different. That’s always where change begins.
I’d been reading about a campaign — Passionate People, Passionate Places — and something in it sparked an idea. What if this year, instead of a guest speaker, I simply spoke from the heart? About the passion behind the work. About the real difference it was making. About the people — the staff, the volunteers, the service users — who showed up every single day and gave everything they had.
I wrote the speech. I clarified every word. I practised the delivery until I knew it flowed. And standing in the wings before I walked out, I felt something I hadn’t quite felt before.
Not confidence exactly. Something quieter than that. Conviction.
I wasn’t doing this for me. I was doing it for everyone in that room who didn’t have a platform. Who didn’t have a position of influence or a microphone or a moment like this. That standpoint was mine — and I wasn’t going to waste it.
It was like standing in my power for the first time.
As I spoke, I asked members of staff and volunteers to stand — one by one — so the room could acknowledge them and the work they did. I watched the pride move across their faces as they rose to their feet. I felt the energy in the room shift. Something electric was building.
By the time I finished, I knew I’d captured a moment. The buzz at the end of the evening told me everything. People were lit up. Inspired. Connected to something real.
And I knew, sitting back down in my chair, that I would be forever changed by that experience.
Not because I’d given a good speech. But because I’d finally stopped waiting for permission to show up fully. I’d stopped outsourcing the important moments to someone else and trusted that what I had to say — what I genuinely felt and believed — was enough.
It was more than enough. It was exactly what was needed.
I’ve thought about that night many times since. And I’ve come to understand something about change that I didn’t have the language for then.
We don’t change when things are comfortable. We change when the cost of staying the same becomes higher than the fear of doing something different. When the discomfort of the familiar finally outweighs the uncertainty of the new.
That night, I changed — not because I had a plan, not because I felt ready, not because someone told me it was time. I changed because something in me had quietly had enough of the alternative. Of sitting in rooms where the important things went unhonoured. Of watching moments pass that could have meant something.
The conviction to do it for others was stronger than the fear of doing it for myself. And that made all the difference.
There’s something else I’ve learned. Had I not listened to myself that night — had I drowned out the voice that was already telling me what needed to happen — I would never have found the truth of that moment. The answer was already in me. It had been there all along. I simply had to get quiet enough to hear it.
That is the hardest and most important thing. Not the doing. The listening. Trusting what you instinctively already know — before anyone else has confirmed it, validated it or given you permission to act on it.
I’ve seen this same pattern in every significant change I’ve made since — and in every person I’ve had the privilege of working alongside. The change doesn’t begin with a strategy or a plan. It begins with a moment of recognition. A moment when something inside you says — quietly, clearly, undeniably — I can’t keep doing this the way I’ve been doing it.
That moment is not a crisis. It’s an invitation.
Change might be difficult. But staying the same is much more painful — because it keeps you stuck. And staying stuck means living with an old self that you’ve outgrown.
And here is what I want you to know, clearly and without qualification. You do not need permission from anyone else to begin. Not from your circumstances. Not from the people around you. Not from a version of yourself that feels more ready than you do right now.
If it feels right — begin. The readiness comes in the doing, not before it.
If you’re reading this and something in it has stirred something in you — that quiet recognition that something needs to shift — I’d gently ask you this.
What is the cost of staying the same? Not in theory. In your body. In your daily life. In the version of yourself you meet in the mirror each morning.
And what might become possible if you stopped waiting for permission to change — and simply began?
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