What Is One Thing You Would Change About Yourself?

If you ask most leaders what they would change about themselves, they instinctively look outward:

Most would say a skill to sharpen, a habit to drop, a weakness to fix.

But the longer I work across teams, boardrooms, and high-stakes environments, the clearer one truth becomes:

The most powerful change is rarely external.

It’s an internal shift that upgrades how we show up.

For me, the one thing I would change is the speed at which I move past meaningful moments.

Like many high-performing professionals, my mind is often ten steps ahead, the next project, the next meeting, the next crisis to defuse.

Momentum is good, but it can quietly rob you of presence.

You can achieve a lot and still miss the texture of the journey.

In my early career as an emergency physician, I prided myself on rapid decision-making and fast execution.

Speed saved lives.

But in leadership, speed without pause can cost you clarity, empathy, and connection.

You solve problems but sometimes overlook the people behind them.

You push forward but rarely stop to absorb the lessons embedded in the moment.

So, the shift I’m working on is simple:

To slow down just enough to see more clearly.

To take a breath after a win before diving into the next battle.

To sit with difficult conversations long enough to truly understand what was said, and what wasn’t.

To let moments teach me before I rush past them.

I am sharing this because every leader I know carries their own “one thing”.

If you had to pick one thing to change about yourself , what would it be?

That answer might just be the start of your next evolution.