1,000 Days, One Decision, Many Lessons
Sometimes the hardest person to lead is ourselves. This weekend marked 1,000 days of sobriety, and the journey has taught me some powerful lessons about courage, commitment, change and leading by example.
Over the weekend I quietly celebrated 1,000 days since I had my last drink. I wasn't originally going to write about this. It is deeply personal, and for a long time I wondered whether it belonged in a leadership newsletter at all.
But as I reflect on what those 1,000 days have required from me, I realised that the lessons are not really about alcohol. They are about courage, asking for help, changing behaviours and habits, finding inner strength, making a difficult decision and having the determination to follow it through.
And perhaps most importantly, they are about recognising that sometimes the change we need to make does not start with everyone else.
It starts with us.
The courage to admit something needs to change
One of the hardest parts of making a significant change is admitting that you need to. There is vulnerability in saying, "This isn't working for me anymore."
As leaders, we are often expected to have the answers. We are rewarded for being capable, resilient and independent. But there is a difference between being capable and believing we should be able to do everything alone.
Asking for help is not weakness. Sometimes it is one of the most courageous things we can do. For me, acknowledging that I needed help was an important part of my journey. It meant being honest with myself about where I was, rather than where I thought I should be. And isn't that also where meaningful leadership development begins?
Before we can change our teams, our culture or our organisations, we have to be willing to look honestly at ourselves.
Research into leadership development consistently points to self-awareness as an important foundation for effective leadership. The Center for Creative Leadership has found that feedback, coaching and other experiences that increase self-awareness can help leaders recognise their strengths and development needs and translate that insight into action.
You cannot change what you are unwilling to see
Knowing you need to change something and actually changing it are two very different things. We all have habits, some are conscious, and others have become so embedded that we barely notice them anymore.
Leadership is full of these patterns too. The way we respond when we are under pressure, the conversations we avoid, the way we react when we are challenged. Whether we listen or immediately try to solve. Whether we create space for others or fill every silence. Whether we say we value wellbeing while continuing to reward busyness.
Changing those behaviours takes more than good intentions. It takes awareness, support, determination and perseverance. It takes being willing to feel uncomfortable while you learn a new way of responding. That is something I have learned very personally over the past 1,000 days.
Change does not happen because we decide once that we want something different, change happens because we keep making different choices. And the research supports this. Behaviour change is not simply a matter of knowing what we should do. Research increasingly points to the importance of behavioural skills, habits and the environment in which those behaviours occur.
That feels very relevant to leadership.
We can attend the leadership program, read the book, understand the model and we can have the insight. But the real question is what happens the next time we are under pressure.
Do we actually behave differently?
The decision has to become a commitment
There have been plenty of days when the decision itself was easy, the commitment was harder.
There is something powerful about making a decision because you know it is the right thing to do, even when it isn't necessarily the easiest thing to do. For me, choosing sobriety was obviously a personal decision. It changed my life and it continues to change my life. But it was never only about me.
It was good for my relationships, it was good for my children, and it changed the way I showed up and the way I interacted with the people around me. A decision can be deeply personal and still have consequences far beyond ourselves.
I think this is one of the most important lessons for leaders. The decisions we make rarely belong only to us. Our behaviour affects our teams, our choices affect our colleagues, and our energy affects the room. What we tolerate becomes part of the culture and what we model becomes something other people notice.
This is why leading by example matters. People watch what we do far more closely than we sometimes realise.
The ripple effect of leadership
I keep coming back to the idea of a ripple. When we change something in ourselves, the change does not necessarily stop with us.
A leader who starts listening differently changes the conversation.
A leader who stops rewarding 24/7 availability changes what their team believes is expected.
A leader who admits they do not have all the answers creates permission for others to be honest too.
A leader who asks for help makes it safer for other people to ask for help.
Our behaviour travels further than we think and sometimes the most powerful leadership intervention is not another strategy, framework or leadership program. Sometimes it is a leader deciding, "I am going to change the way I show up."
One choice at a time
There is another lesson from this journey that I think applies beautifully to leadership. You do not change a deeply established pattern by making one big decision and then forgetting about it. You change it one choice at a time.
One conversation.
One boundary.
One response.
One difficult moment where you choose differently from how you might have chosen before.
And then you do it again. And again.
Eventually, the new behaviour starts to become part of who you are. That is what leadership development looks like too. It is not necessarily about becoming a different person, it is about becoming more intentional about the person and leader you choose to be.
My decision to stop drinking was personal. But the benefits of that decision have never been limited to me. That is true of leadership too, the work we do on ourselves has a ripple effect.
The man in the arena
There is a Theodore Roosevelt quote I have always loved (which Brene Brown also refers to in her work), and after the last 1,000 days, I think about it differently. In his 1910 speech "Citizenship in a Republic", he spoke about the person who is actually "in the arena", striving, making mistakes, falling short and continuing to try.
He described self-restraint, self-mastery, individual responsibility, courage and resolution as qualities that matter deeply.
I think there is something very powerful in that. Leadership is not about getting everything right, it is about being willing to get into the arena and do the work. To look at ourselves honestly, acknowledge where we need to grow, ask for help, make the difficult decision, to keep showing up when it gets hard, and to accept that we will sometimes get it wrong along the way.
So, what can leaders take from this?
Be honest about what is not working. Ask yourself some uncomfortable questions; what behaviour, habit or pattern are you tolerating in yourself because changing it feels difficult?
Ask for help. You do not need to have all the answers. There is strength in seeking perspective, challenge, coaching or simply someone who can walk alongside you.
Choose one behaviour to change. Rather than creating a long list of things you need to improve, ask yourself which one change would make the greatest difference to the way you lead.
Expect discomfort. Changing a habit means doing something differently, and different can feel uncomfortable before it feels natural.
And finally, remember the ripple. Ask yourself what might change for the people around you if you changed something in yourself.
Today, I am quietly proud of 1,000 days. Not because it has been easy, but because it has taught me something I think every leader needs to remember.
We have far more agency over how we show up than we sometimes realise. And sometimes the greatest act of leadership is simply having the courage to change ourselves first.
I’d love to hear you thoughts.
With gratitude, Kathryn