The champagne is usually warm by the time you actually get to drink it. I was standing in a room with 43 people I’ve known for nearly 13 years, and I had just been handed a plaque that weighed about 3 pounds but felt like 103. It was the kind of award that signifies you have successfully ascended a mountain that you didn’t necessarily want to climb in the first place. Everyone was clapping, and my body was doing that thing I teach my clients to avoid-the ‘socially acceptable lie.’ My torso was squared to the room, my smile was wide enough to look genuine in a grainy photo, but my feet were angled at exactly 43 degrees toward the exit. It’s a classic displacement gesture. Even in my moment of supposed triumph, my biology was trying to leave the building.

We spend the first 23 years of our lives being told that the ladder is the only structure that matters. If you are good at something, you do more of it. If you do more of it, you get promoted. If you get promoted, you are successful. But here’s the contradiction I’ve lived and seen in 33 different industries: being good at something is often the very thing that keeps you from being happy. I spent years perfecting the ‘confident executive’ posture for men who were secretly vibrating with anxiety. I coached them on how to take up more physical space in boardrooms while their inner lives were shrinking into the size of a walnut. I realized, quite late, that I was doing the same thing. I was so competent at navigating the system that I forgot to ask if the system was worth my time.

The 93% Stalling Point

Yesterday, I sat at my desk and watched a video buffer at 93%. It just stayed there. The little circle spun and spun, and I felt a physical surge of rage that was entirely disproportionate to the situation. It’s that 93% feeling-the sense that you are almost at the finish line, you’ve done 93% of the work, but the last bit of loading, the actual delivery of the joy, is frozen. Most mid-career crises are just people stuck at 93%. They have the title, the salary of $150,003, the respect of their peers, and the internal loading bar has simply stopped moving. We are waiting for the achievement to feel like something other than fatigue, but it never does.

I’m Jax J.-M., and I’ve spent my career reading the tiny muscles in the human face. There is a specific micro-expression-a downward tug of the commissures of the mouth followed by a brief, sharp inhalation-that occurs right after someone receives good news they didn’t want. I see it at least 3 times a week. It’s the body’s way of mourning a choice that was never made. When we climb because we can, we aren’t choosing; we are reacting to gravity. The ladder doesn’t care who is on it as long as the weight is moving upward.

“The ladder is a tool for the institution, not a map for the individual.”

– Jax J.-M.

The Victim of Competence

I remember a client, let’s call him Marcus, who had 23 years in corporate law. He had the ‘power walk’ down to a science. His stride was exactly 43 inches, his arm swing was controlled, and he looked like a man who owned every floor he stepped on. But when we sat down, his hands would perform a repetitive ‘lint-picking’ gesture on his expensive wool trousers. This is a sign of suppressed irritability and boredom. He was a master of a craft he hated. He had climbed so high that the air was thin, and he was terrified that if he stopped, he’d realize he didn’t know how to do anything else. He was a victim of his own competence. He was so good at being a lawyer that nobody ever stopped to ask if he wanted to be one. And he was too ‘successful’ to admit he was miserable.

This brings me to a mistake I made back in 2013. I was offered a massive contract to consult for a firm that I knew, deep down, had a toxic culture. But the numbers ended in 3 and were very high-think $200,003 for a month’s work-and my ego wanted the win. I told myself it was a ‘growth opportunity.’ I spent 43 days in that office, and by day 3, my own body was breaking down. I developed a tic in my left eyelid. I started clenching my jaw so hard I cracked a molar. I was teaching their executives how to look empathetic while I was feeling nothing but contempt. I had prioritized the ‘climb’ over the ‘choice.’ I was accelerating in a car that was headed toward a cliff.

Alignment Over Posture

We often think that reflection is a luxury for the young or the retired. But the most dangerous time to stop reflecting is when you are at the peak of your powers. That’s when the cost of a wrong turn becomes truly expensive. Many people come to me wanting to ‘look more confident’ or ‘command the room,’ but the real work is often finding out why they feel like an imposter in a life they built themselves. It’s not about the posture; it’s about the alignment. If your internal goals are 183 degrees away from your external actions, no amount of ‘power posing’ will fix the hollow feeling in your chest.

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True authority is the ability to say no to a promotion that doesn’t serve your soul.

– Jax J.-M.

There’s a certain aikido to career management. Usually, we think we have to fight the system or submit to it. But the real power comes in using the system’s momentum to move where you actually want to go. This requires an intentionality that the standard career ladder discourages. The ladder wants you to look up. It never wants you to look sideways. It certainly never wants you to look down and see how far you’ve drifted from the ground of your own values. Professional development isn’t just about adding new skills to your resume; it’s about refining the compass you use to decide which skills to use in the first place. You can find resources that help navigate these shifts at Empowermind.dk, where the focus is on the human behind the professional.

Competence vs. Purpose

I’ve noticed that people who are truly in their ‘element’ have a physical presence that is both heavy and light. They don’t need to perform ‘authority’ because they occupy it. Their movements are efficient-no wasted 3-second fidgets, no over-explaining with their hands. They have chosen their path, rather than having been funneled into it by a series of ‘next logical steps.’ This is the difference between a career built on competence and one built on purpose. Competence is what you can do; purpose is what you must do.

Let’s go back to that buffering video. The reason it’s so frustrating isn’t the wait; it’s the uncertainty. Is it going to load, or do I need to refresh the page? Most of us are afraid to refresh the page because we’ve already invested 13 or 23 years into the current load. We think that hitting ‘refresh’ means losing everything. But in the architecture of a human life, refreshing isn’t losing; it’s reclaiming the bandwidth. It’s admitting that the current path has stalled and that you have the right to choose a different stream.

I once knew a woman who was a top-tier surgeon. She had 33 awards on her wall and a reputation for being the best in her field. She came to me because her staff was terrified of her. She wasn’t a mean person; she was a ‘buffering’ person. She was stuck at 93% satisfaction and was taking her frustration out on the world. We spent 43 minutes talking about her hands. She told me she loved the precision of surgery, but she hated the hospital politics. She was a ‘climber’ who had ended up in administration when all she wanted was the craft. When she finally stepped back into a role that was ‘lower’ on the ladder but higher in fulfillment, her body changed. The tension in her neck vanished. Her voice dropped 3 decibels into a more resonant, relaxed register. She stopped performing ‘surgeon’ and started being one.

The Data of Self-Betrayal

It’s a strange thing to realize that you’ve been successful at a life you don’t particularly like. It feels ungrateful. It feels like a betrayal of the 23-year-old version of you who worked so hard to get here. But the 23-year-old you didn’t have the data that the current you has. They didn’t know how the air felt at the top of this particular ladder. To continue climbing just because you started is not loyalty to your past self; it’s a sentence of hard labor for your future self. We need to give ourselves permission to stand on a rung, look around, and decide that we’ve gone high enough in this direction.

I still think about that plaque I was handed. I kept it for 3 months, then I put it in a box in the attic. I don’t need a piece of wood to tell me I’m competent. I need my own body to tell me I’m in the right place. And these days, when I walk into a room, I’m not looking for the ladder. I’m looking for the window. I’m looking for the exit. Not because I want to leave, but because I want to know that I’m staying by choice, not by habit. If your career feels like it’s been buffering for the last 3 years, maybe it’s time to stop waiting for the load to finish and just change the video. What would happen if you stopped climbing and started choosing?