"What does not having it all look like to you?"

A new book by bestselling author Emma Gannon asks life changing questions

My interview with the lovely Emma Gannon, best-selling author and award-winning podcaster, has just been published in The Telegraph. Emma’s new book The Success Myth is out on the 18th May and I promise you it will make your shoulders drop three inches by the time you’ve read the first chapter. It is a permission slip to escape ‘the achievement trap’. The book explores why the traditional version of success is making us feel lonely, unfulfilled and dispirited.

“Society expects us to be constantly achieving, and I think a lot of people are exhausted, quite frankly,” says Emma. “And they just want less. I’ve coached people who are incredibly successful, and when you really strip it back to what they want, they want a four-day week, they want to have days off to go to the cinema, they want to go for a walk with their dog, they want to catch up with a friend, they want to go outside in the sun.”

Photo by Tschernjawski Sergej on Unsplas

It’s personal

The interview with Emma feels personal, not just professional, because I’m right in the middle of redefining what success means to me as I make my post-Covid leap, leaving behind a big job in London to live on the wild coast of Northumberland.

Photo by Tom Hills on Unsplash

Emma’s book was exactly what I needed to read.

It’s quietly life-changing as it helps you reframe what success might mean to you with gentle questions which invite you to identify what really makes you happy versus the hamster wheel of constantly seeking external validation and rewards.

Here are three questions from the book to ponder:

1.     What does ‘not having it all’ look like to you?

What’s one thing you could drop which makes your shoulders drop?

2.     Why is money important to you? What does it allow you to do? What does money represent and what do you want it for?

3.     What would your happy life like if you didn’t have to advertise it others? What makes you feel truly satisfied?

The Success Myth: Our obsession with achievement is a trap. This is how to break free (Penguin, £16.99)by Emma Gannon is out on May 19^th.