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Original article was created for <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-190845725" href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-190845725">Substack</a> on 3/13/2026On the words that diminish, the words that hold, and what we owe the people in our care.I was getting ready for the hike in Poland when it happened.The comment was small. It always is. “Do you have another sweater? You’ll be cold.” Said in love, I have no doubt about that. But landing, as it always does, like a gentle correction. Like I hadn’t quite gotten it right. Like I still needed managing.&nbsp;I didn’t react the way I used to. Six months of a sabbatical and real inner work had changed something in my nervous system. The comment arrived and, for the first time I can remember, just passed through. I stayed warm. I stayed present. I let her love me in the language she had.But sitting there, I found myself thinking about something else entirely.How many leaders speak to their people exactly this way?* * *We do it without realizing. The small correction in the meeting, delivered in front of others, that was meant to help but landed as a verdict. The feedback that opens with what’s wrong before it ever acknowledges what’s right. The tone that says, underneath the words: I’m not sure you’ve got this. Let me fix it for you.“Do you have another sweater?” is not malicious. Neither is most of the language that slowly erodes someone’s confidence at work. It comes from care, from high standards, from wanting things done well. But intent does not determine impact. And when the people we lead hear those messages, drip by drip, meeting by meeting, something happens to them. They get smaller. They stop bringing ideas. They start waiting to be told rather than trusting themselves to act.We knock people down with our words far more often than we know. And we build them up far less than we think we do.I spent time in Poland with family I hadn’t seen in nearly two decades. My cousin and I talked about generational patterns, how the way we were spoken to becomes, without our awareness, the way we speak. It travels. It repeats. It shows up in our relationships, our parenting, our leadership. Until someone interrupts the pattern.That interruption is the work. And it doesn’t happen by accident.* * *My flight home had its own lesson waiting.My connection from Kraków was delayed. I missed my onward flight from Amsterdam to Atlanta. A year ago, that would have been a controlled implosion, frustration at the counter, resentment worn like a coat through the whole evening, a bad mood inflicted on anyone nearby.Instead, something different happened. I let it be what it was: an unexpected evening in a city I hadn’t seen since I was sixteen.<figure id="figure-dz4ue73rfmmp2r33w"><img id="dz4ue73rfmmp2r33w" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/15XrYqd3ygsya0EUTMTvkXwwvXbUMoDVWE2c1pb4vS8ThsY3UmO8RKRzVBqc9Bmf.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/15XrYqd3ygsya0EUTMTvkXwwvXbUMoDVWE2c1pb4vS8ThsY3UmO8RKRzVBqc9Bmf.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;"></figure>I reached out to a friend for recommendations. He gave me two places: a beautiful neighborhood café, and a no-frills bar near the red light district that locals actually go to. I walked out into the Amsterdam evening, canals lit and shimmering, weather just right, no agenda. A pint of cold beer. The best steak and fries I can remember. A long walk through streets full of life and color. Not a single moment of wishing I were somewhere else.<figure id="figure-m655r9kocammp2sjqg"><img id="m655r9kocammp2sjqg" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/3b4RD6T5WJ54WHDa4rVikkqTuRmZB7kWJigLHeT93kTMws5RtGnRoEAjjInFBQkN.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/3b4RD6T5WJ54WHDa4rVikkqTuRmZB7kWJigLHeT93kTMws5RtGnRoEAjjInFBQkN.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;"></figure>The next morning: a KLM comfort seat, good wine, ten hours to think. What had started as a disruption became one of the finest stretches of the whole trip.This is what regulation looks like in practice. Not the absence of difficulty, the ability to meet it without resistance. And it is every bit as relevant to the way we lead as it is to the way we travel.The leader who can stay steady when things go sideways, who doesn’t pass their anxiety down the org chart, who doesn’t make their team smaller with their reaction to a problem, that leader changes the room. They make it safe to bring bad news early. They make it possible for people to say “I don’t know” without fear. That is not a soft outcome. That is how organizations actually function well.* * *And then came the part that humbled me.In the Amsterdam duty free, I had carefully chosen gifts, chocolates, cheeses, things picked with specific people in mind. I loaded the bag into the overhead compartment. I deplaned in Atlanta. I left the bag on the plane.<figure id="figure-u16eapcyscmmp2tpig"><img id="u16eapcyscmmp2tpig" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/362Hy5lxaIVXr9qKd21DYfpoNDBn7TtOd5Nrs5vcpbuQZWfKx1elHXFRDS6vEDdm.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/362Hy5lxaIVXr9qKd21DYfpoNDBn7TtOd5Nrs5vcpbuQZWfKx1elHXFRDS6vEDdm.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;"></figure>Forty-five minutes later, I knew what had happened.I went to the <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/@klmairlinesreservations871550?utm_source=global-search" href="https://substack.com/@klmairlinesreservations871550?utm_source=global-search">KLM </a>desk. They contacted the plane. The bag was already gone.What followed was one of the most instructive leadership failures I have experienced as a customer. <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/@klmairlinesreservations871550?utm_source=global-search" href="https://substack.com/@klmairlinesreservations871550?utm_source=global-search">KLM</a> pointed me to the airport. <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/ATLairport" href="https://x.com/ATLairport">TSA</a> sent me to domestic lost and found. Domestic lost and found said they don’t handle international arrivals. The phone numbers on <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/KLM" href="https://x.com/KLM">KLM</a>’s website looped to a booking agent who told me to check with <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/ATLairport" href="https://x.com/ATLairport">local staff</a>. <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/ATLairport" href="https://x.com/ATLairport">Local staff</a> sent me back to <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/KLM" href="https://x.com/KLM">KLM</a>. Every single person was polite. Not one of them owned the problem.I spent two days trying to understand why this knocked me as flat as it did. The gifts themselves were replaceable. What I could not shake was what that experience felt like from the inside: helpless. Unmoored. Passed from desk to desk with the implicit message that my problem wasn’t quite anyone’s problem.It is the organizational version of the sweater comment. Not unkind. Just absent. No one had been trained, or perhaps given permission, to stay in the room with a person who needed help and had nowhere clear to go.Ownership is not a department. It is a posture. It is what you bring to the moment when someone is standing in front of you without a clear path forward. You don’t need to have the answer. You need to be willing to say: I don’t know either, but I am not going to hand you to someone else. We’ll figure this out.Nobody said that to me at the <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/ATLairport" href="https://x.com/ATLairport">Atlanta airport</a>. It is a small thing, and also not a small thing at all.* * *I have been sitting with all of this since I came home. Amsterdam arriving like a gift I didn’t earn. The lost chocolates. The two days it took me to come back to myself.What runs through all of it is the same thread: the words we choose, and the presence we bring, either build people up or quietly leave them smaller. At home. In the meeting room. At the service desk in a terminal.Leadership is not a title. It is the accumulation of small moments whether you stayed, whether you steadied the room, whether the person in front of you walked away feeling more capable or less.That is the work I care about. The kind that starts inside and extends outward. The kind that <a data-mce-href="http://www.anthilles.com" href="http://www.anthilles.com">Anthilles</a> was built to support, because no leader should have to figure out alone how to interrupt the patterns they inherited, and no team should be left standing in a corridor with nowhere to go.<figure id="figure-p3phssechommp2xhhn"><img id="p3phssechommp2xhhn" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/30DLhLnfMCXphoJZ8fvv7ZTTCfGkKbZ3jLoA5FjtninfT4gQERl1uiC7OZuXbe3q.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionX="undefined" data-positionY="undefined" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>

Going Back to Go Forward

Original article created for Substack on 3/07/2026What Going Home Teaches You About LeadershipBy the time you read this, I’m in Poland.I’m somewhere between a family dinner table and an emotional time machine, sitting with people I haven’t seen in 18 years, watching faces I knew as a child now etched with life, laughing at stories I’d half-forgotten, eating food that somehow still tastes exactly like I remembered.But let me start at the airport. I always seem to start at the airport.<figure id="figure-ljet5uzd7rmmp2gwej"><img id="ljet5uzd7rmmp2gwej" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/371y0Pr0BJKU5szoP2brl5XQNQYAe4CpzHUSKS4FVOwqWDstZv0a7K5Zf6jvRvjX.png" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/371y0Pr0BJKU5szoP2brl5XQNQYAe4CpzHUSKS4FVOwqWDstZv0a7K5Zf6jvRvjX.png" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>&nbsp;A few months ago, I posted something on <a data-mce-href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dorotacastillo_i-just-had-a-realization-that-i-absolutely-share-7402794481605050369-dla5/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAAAH14SABgHxBnlDuGwGkdyuFh6pB8ZSYeXU" href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dorotacastillo_i-just-had-a-realization-that-i-absolutely-share-7402794481605050369-dla5/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAAAH14SABgHxBnlDuGwGkdyuFh6pB8ZSYeXU">LinkedIn</a> from an airport bar as I was heading to Chicago. Pre-flight drink in hand, heading to see old friends, I wrote about how airports give me this feeling I can’t quite shake: anticipation, possibility, movement. About how every person around you is in transition, heading somewhere new, leaving something behind. And how that mirrors almost exactly what happens inside organizations during mergers, acquisitions, and major change.The post resonated. A lot.But here’s what I didn’t fully say then, and what I understand better now, sitting in a completely different kind of airport, on a completely different kind of journey:There is a version of transition that isn’t about going somewhere new. It’s about going back.And going back, it turns out, might be the most clarifying thing a leader can do.<h3>What 18 Years of Distance Does</h3>I’ve been building <a data-mce-href="http://www.anthilles.com" href="http://www.anthilles.com">Anthilles Consulting</a> , working with executives navigating transformation, helping organizations bridge the gap between bold vision and human reality on the ground. I spend a lot of time thinking forward. Anticipating what’s next. Helping clients move.So this trip wasn’t just personal. It was a kind of confrontation with my own origin story.When you go years without seeing certain people, your memories quietly calcify into a version of them that feels permanent. The aunt who seemed impossibly old when you were a kid. The cousin who was five and still somehow running circles around everyone. The house that felt enormous. The neighborhood that seemed like the whole world.You keep that snapshot in amber and build your identity partly on top of it, without ever checking whether it still matches.And then you show up. And someone who was a child is now a fully formed adult with their own children. And the aunt is still there, smaller maybe, but with the same laugh. And the house is fine, but you realize the enormity was never about square footage.The world didn’t freeze. You were just far away.&nbsp; <h3>Why Leaders Stop Going Back</h3>Here’s what I’ve noticed in the executives I work with: somewhere between the climb and the arrival, many of them stop looking behind them.And I don’t mean this in a sentimental “remember your roots” way, I mean it practically.The higher you rise in an organization, the more you optimize for the next thing. The next quarter. The next acquisition. The next phase. There is enormous pressure on leaders to maintain forward momentum, to project confidence, to not look like you’re dwelling.But there’s an enormous cost to never returning to the baseline.When was the last time you went back to your frontline not to inspect, but to genuinely remember? When was the last time you sat with someone three levels below you and tried to feel what the organization felt like from their vantage point? When did you last revisit why you got into your industry in the first place not in a speech, but in the quiet of your own honest reflection?The executives who navigate transformation best, and I mean the ones who actually land their organizations in a better place than where they started, are almost always the ones who can hold both. Forward vision and backward clarity. Where we’re going and where we came from.<h3>&nbsp; The Airport Is Not the Destination</h3>I love airports. I’ve come to love them the way I love in-between moments, conversations that happen on long drives, confessions that come out during layovers, realizations that arrive when you’re too tired to filter them.There is something about being suspended between places that creates an unusual kind of honesty.In transformation work, I call this the transition gap, the space between when an organization announces a change and when that change is actually lived by the people inside it. Most leaders rush through this gap. They want to close it fast, get to the other side, declare success.But the transition gap is where the real work happens. It’s where people decide whether they trust you. It’s where culture either holds or fractures. It’s where the distance between what leadership said and what people actually experienced becomes visible.You can’t shortcut it. You can only be present in it.Reconnecting with family I haven’t seen in 18 years, there’s a transition gap here too. Eighteen years of unexperienced shared life. Eighteen years of change on both sides of the gap. The only way across isn’t a plan. It’s presence. It’s showing up and being willing to meet people where they actually are, not where your frozen memory placed them.That’s leadership too.<h3>&nbsp; What Going Home Teaches You That Going Somewhere New Cannot</h3>New destinations are exhilarating. New markets, new roles, new strategic directions, there is real value in the energy of the unfamiliar.But returning somewhere teaches you something different. It teaches you what has genuinely changed versus what you only believed had changed. It shows you which values survived the distance and which ones you quietly abandoned for convenience. It lets you measure yourself not against an imagined future self, but against who you actually were.That kind of feedback is hard to get anywhere else.At <a data-mce-href="http://www.anthilles.com" href="http://www.anthilles.com">Anthilles,</a> a lot of what I do is help leadership teams see their organizations with fresh eyes, the kind of eyes that neither idealize nor dismiss, but just see clearly. It turns out that clarity is a skill. And one of the best ways to practice it is to return somewhere you thought you already knew.The organization you’ve led for seven years. The client relationship you’ve managed for a decade. The team you promoted through three cycles. When did you last really look?<h3>&nbsp; The Drink at the Bar, Revisited</h3>Back in December, sitting at that Chicago airport bar, I wrote about how frontline employees are all sitting in their own version of the airport wondering: Where am I going? What happens to my career? Will I matter there?I still believe that. I still think the most underrated skill in organizational leadership is the ability to translate vision into personal relevance for every person who has to carry it out.But I’d add something now:The best leaders I know don’t just know where they’re taking their people. They know where they came from. They remember what it felt like before they had the answers when they were the one sitting in the departure lounge, uncertain.That memory isn’t weakness. It’s the compass that keeps you honest about what transformation actually costs the people inside it. And it’s the thing that makes you, in the end, not just a strategist, but someone worth following.&nbsp; I’ll be back home soon.Filled up with pierogi and old stories and the particular exhaustion that comes from feeling something you didn’t know you’d been missing.And I’ll sit back down at my desk, back to the work of helping executives build organizations that move forward, carrying all of it with me.The airports. The return. The 18 years in between.Because it turns out the best preparation for helping others navigate transition isn’t always knowing the destination.Sometimes it’s being willing to make the trip home.<figure id="figure-z5na88kcimmp2mh53"><img id="z5na88kcimmp2mh53" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/eYA9IcEiTurbZ3dK8A2qo0iaDsRcj4rt8CaVfLuFM4GPSlitLPK2CEwFl9WEC6Zr.png" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/eYA9IcEiTurbZ3dK8A2qo0iaDsRcj4rt8CaVfLuFM4GPSlitLPK2CEwFl9WEC6Zr.png" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>

The Airport Bar and the 18-Year Gap

Why Serious Leaders Need Hobbies, and How I rebuilt creativity after years in executive modeArticle originally wrote for <a data-mce-href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-nervous-system-of-leadership-879?r=1up3dt&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;triedRedirect=true" href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-nervous-system-of-leadership-879?r=1up3dt&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;triedRedirect=true">Substack</a> 2.27.2026Last week, I <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/@dorotaww/p-188628263" href="https://substack.com/@dorotaww/p-188628263">wrote</a> about the emotional shock of finding myself a true beginner again while exhibiting my artwork publicly. That experience opened a deeper question for me: if returning to novice energy is so powerful for leaders, how do we create it intentionally in our lives rather than waiting for it to happen by accident?I have been following <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/@marinacooley?utm_source=global-search" href="https://substack.com/@marinacooley?utm_source=global-search">Marina Cooley</a> since she first started writing on Substack. One of her recurring themes is hobbies. Every time she wrote about them (the variety, the curiosity, the ease with which she seemed to move between interests), I felt something uncomfortable.Jealousy.Not because I didn’t admire her. But because I didn’t have that. I couldn’t even imagine having that.At the time, I was deep in the trenches of corporate life. My days were filled with decision-making, navigating chaos, mentoring leaders, regulating emotions, mine and everyone else’s. By the time I drove ninety minutes home, there was nothing left. I would walk into the house, eat dinner, and go straight to bed. Weekends were for groceries and recovery. Reading was the only thing that allowed me to momentarily escape and brace myself for the next week.For me, the answer began to emerge through something I once believed I did not have time for at all. Hobbies.<figure id="figure-lmwr0wkqummm4xvue1"><img id="lmwr0wkqummm4xvue1" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/19ZySdjpGMLNo6VfxZarWxCPgnWJN1mwhJvRX6xvetOwK74td2Lz4s7P17CJ80fY.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/19ZySdjpGMLNo6VfxZarWxCPgnWJN1mwhJvRX6xvetOwK74td2Lz4s7P17CJ80fY.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>There was no room for hobbies.Then sabbatical happened.And almost immediately, something unexpected began to surface.When I couldn’t sleep, I started writing in five different journals at once, not structured entries, just whatever needed to come out. Then I began painting. At first sporadically, and then obsessively, sometimes two paintings a day. There was no system, no discipline, no strategic intention behind it. Just brush to canvas and an immediate calming effect I hadn’t felt in years.<figure id="figure-awa6vq62rmm4xwh5v"><img id="awa6vq62rmm4xwh5v" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/230KXB4EdlF5faul6dMsrpoVFrZOHes81rK7iszmJhn1hpX678Kuv6W8zQxknGjr.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: 30% 35%;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="30%" data-positiony="35%" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/230KXB4EdlF5faul6dMsrpoVFrZOHes81rK7iszmJhn1hpX678Kuv6W8zQxknGjr.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: 30% 35%;"></figure>Poetry followed the same way. Multiple poems within weeks, as if something unnamed had been waiting patiently for space. The output felt chaotic, unconfined, almost inconvenient and yet deeply regulating.And then, quietly, structure emerged.I felt the need to gather everything into one place. I built a website. I organized the paintings, the poetry, the writing. I revisited old LinkedIn articles and started a weekly Substack column because, quite frankly, I have too much to say to keep it to myself.Only then did I realize what had happened.These were my hobbies.Not imposed. Not scheduled. Not optimized.They surfaced the moment my nervous system finally came off high alert.In one of <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/@marinacooley?utm_source=global-search" href="https://substack.com/@marinacooley?utm_source=global-search">Marina's </a>recent articles <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-188443195" href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-188443195">Is bad WiFi going to keep him from Olympic Gold?</a>, she writes about Olympians. To us, their sport may look like artistry or play. But for them, it is contracts, rankings, funding, national expectations. The nervous system lives in a constant state of pressure. And that state cannot be sustained indefinitely. There must be something structurally different, something that allows the system to go “off duty.”It resonated immediately.Because I now know I was living in that same high-alert state for years. Leadership, at a high level, is emotional labor. It is cognitive intensity. It is constant evaluation and regulation. And while I loved it, my body never fully clocked out.Hobbies became my off-duty environment.I already touched on painting, poetry, and writing that are now my daily, weekly, and monthly rhythm. But wait, there is more! Reviving my Spanish and French and now learning Korean because of a K-drama obsession, forces me into imperfection again. Mahjong, which I now play with women who have forty years of experience, brings joy with almost no consequence attached. Astrology slows me down and stretches my thinking beyond quarterly metrics and operational structure. And baking traditional Polish pastries reconnects me to lineage and memory in a way no executive achievement ever could.<figure id="figure-aolft2zuksmm4xyklp"><img id="aolft2zuksmm4xyklp" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/17Mo3flj4fR83Of443UeYIt6jPbI9G7C3v01zNOTGuVSTGjiZVA0vAxpSE3qHh10.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/17Mo3flj4fR83Of443UeYIt6jPbI9G7C3v01zNOTGuVSTGjiZVA0vAxpSE3qHh10.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>And then there is movement.Hiking returns me to presence in a way few things can. There is no optimization, no urgency — only the rhythm of breath, terrain, and time. Skiing does something similar, but through challenge instead of stillness. It demands focus, humility, and trust in the body rather than the intellect. Traveling extends that lesson even further. Stepping into new countries, languages, and cultural norms disrupts routine and perspective; it forces awareness, adaptability, and curiosity. In all three, I am reminded that progress is not always linear, that mastery cannot be rushed, and that growth often begins with disorientation.<figure id="figure-58rg9go1k7mm4xzj40"><img id="58rg9go1k7mm4xzj40" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/3bSKognsveLb1BuFLj7GhngGqhkRmSC55cj7PDq9eRkSwC0TnQjtwKywNeFVI6L2.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionX="undefined" data-positionY="undefined" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>None of these pursuits produce revenue. None of them improve my resume in any conventional way.But all of them improve my leadership.Because they returned me to beginner energy.They reminded me what it feels like not to know, not to excel immediately, not to have control. They reminded me how uncomfortable growth can feel in the body, how exposed and uncertain it is to step into something new.And that realization ties directly to the lesson from last week’s exhibition.Leadership is growth. Both personal growth and the growth of others. But we cannot cultivate a culture of development, mentoring, and expansion if we ourselves are no longer expanding. If we remain only in domains where we are experts, we slowly lose empathy for the emotional experience of learning.When we allow ourselves to slow down, to become novices again, to feel slightly out of place, we regain proximity to the vulnerability that our teams feel when they stretch.And that changes how we lead.As my sabbatical comes to a close, I know one thing with certainty: I will not give up my hobbies. They are not indulgences. They are not luxuries.They are structural protection for my nervous system and expansion for my leadership.And I am no longer jealous of anyone else’s.

The Nervous System of Leadership – Part Two

When Competence Stops Growing and why high-performing leaders must return to beginner energy.This article was written for Substack on 2/20/2026 <a href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-nervous-system-of-leadership" data-mce-href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-nervous-system-of-leadership">The Nervous System of Leadership – Part one</a>This past weekend I attended a local art gallery that invites emerging artists from complete beginners to more advanced creators, to showcase their work. I have been to galleries and museums many times before, of course, comfortably walking through rooms filled with paintings on the walls. But this time felt entirely different.Because one of the paintings was mine.This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. &nbsp; If you have been reading my column, you know I am new to this space. In fact, my first instinct was still to say, “I am not an artist.” But that is no longer true. I create, so I am an artist. What makes this moment even more meaningful is that I never painted with the intention of putting my work out into the world. The opportunity simply found me, and I decided to say yes. The exhibition theme was "Something Red"<figure id="figure-l4c0zrv4wlmlv3ygu3"><img id="l4c0zrv4wlmlv3ygu3" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/20rwBwh43zjzrugExyCRU8OvcdToCmolAGhGbZWEtKn60xg4x3Dj4Bm2jPyR7O2T.png" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/20rwBwh43zjzrugExyCRU8OvcdToCmolAGhGbZWEtKn60xg4x3Dj4Bm2jPyR7O2T.png" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>Red, for me, has always been a complicated color. Wearing red means you stand out, and for years I believed I did not look good in it. That, of course, turned out not to be true. I look beautiful in red, and over the past few years I have worn it more boldly and unapologetically. Interestingly, that shift happened at the same time I was growing into my confidence as a woman and as a business executive running multiple departments. As I began to fully own my knowledge and skills, showing up in color became part of that embodiment.<figure id="figure-4k7j2itm6mlv3z2g1"><img id="4k7j2itm6mlv3z2g1" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/37le1GysyoEZjlYMYW2axdbtHi5sZQlGQ6JwPGNSIb2EKY2RUhzRciG38N1oNxIZ.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 3/2; object-position: undefined undefined;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="3:2" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/37le1GysyoEZjlYMYW2axdbtHi5sZQlGQ6JwPGNSIb2EKY2RUhzRciG38N1oNxIZ.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 3/2; object-position: undefined undefined;"></figure>Then came my sabbatical, and with it the unexpected uncovering of artistic expression through painting. If you look at my body of work, my safe palette is obvious: greens, blues, blacks, and browns. Grounded colors. Controlled colors. Familiar territory. There was virtually no red in sight until Devotion, then The Guardian, and finally Quantum Faith.But the real stretch was not the painting itself. It was being part of the exhibition.I walked into the gallery with quiet composure, though somewhere underneath there was a small but persistent whisper: I don’t belong here. Still, I showed up fully present and allowed the evening to unfold without expectation.<figure id="figure-cskkv4rdojmlv40df9"><img id="cskkv4rdojmlv40df9" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/372g8TlpJYGW1rgklk0Y8WlwSlnPuI4NH2j4WCSWeDaKoQ6lsjQ1rRvnM0Fmoafn.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: undefined undefined;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/372g8TlpJYGW1rgklk0Y8WlwSlnPuI4NH2j4WCSWeDaKoQ6lsjQ1rRvnM0Fmoafn.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: undefined undefined;"></figure> What surprised me was what happened afterward.As we were driving home, I felt tears begin to surface, unexpected, steady, and emotionally charged in a way I had not anticipated. It took me a moment to understand what was actually moving through me. And then it became clear.For more than twenty years, I have lived inside competence. I have worn the hats of executive, mentor, and the person who “figures it out.” Even as I continued to evolve, learn, and collect certifications, I remained within professional environments where I understood the rules of the game and trusted my ability to perform.This experience was different.For the first time in decades, I had placed myself squarely in the position of a true beginner, visibly new, unpolished, and without the protective armor of expertise. What struck me most was not discomfort in the room itself, but the realization of how long it had been since I had allowed myself to feel this level of newness.It was both humbling and emotionally disarming.And it also revealed something important about leadership.Many high-performing professionals, once established in their corporate identities, unintentionally stop putting themselves in environments that require true beginner energy. They continue to grow within their domain, of course, but often rely on frameworks and patterns that have worked for years (sometimes decades!) even as the complexity of the problems around them evolves.This is not a failure of intelligence or capability. It is, more often, a quiet distance from the lived experience of not knowing.I am not suggesting I now have some grand answer. But stepping into this unfamiliar creative space reminded me of something I believe many leaders forget: cultivating new experiences and genuine novice moments is not optional if we want to continue expanding our perspective.And for those of us who lead others, the responsibility goes further. We are not only called to stretch ourselves, but also to create environments where the people around us are supported in doing the same where learning, experimentation, and even visible inexperience are treated not as weaknesses, but as necessary conditions for growth.This experience stayed with me longer than I expected. Not just because of the vulnerability it surfaced, but because it raised a deeper question about how long high-performing leaders can operate without regularly returning to beginner energy. Over the past few months, I have been exploring what creates those conditions intentionally and what I discovered surprised me. I share that reflection in my next piece.<figure id="figure-r7bjw5ytgmlv41owv"><img id="r7bjw5ytgmlv41owv" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/38TrzCjQGZbm9UbadPBpbTN3xUuXDfqeU3xIgR4CIRHklfpWHRWdTLix5OFYOW5y.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionX="undefined" data-positionY="undefined" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>

The Nervous System of Leadership – Part One

Ten No’s, One Yes. Why Now I’m Choosing Conviction Over ComfortThis article was originally posted on Substack 2.13.20206 <a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-187647715" data-mce-href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-187647715" title="Substack">https://substack.com/home/post/p-187647715</a> Last week I rewatched Knock Down the House, a documentary that follows women running in the 2018 primary elections across the country.The first time I saw it, I admired it. This time, I felt it.&nbsp; The film highlights women who were not supposed to be there. Women without money, without legacy power, without permission. They all gathered courage to take on the machinery of incumbency, money, and status quo politics.All of them ran because something felt wrong. And they refused to look away.They were ordinary women. Mothers. Workers. People with bills and doubts and fear in their bodies. And still, they stepped forward. They knocked on doors that were not built for them. They challenged systems that were comfortable staying unchanged.Watching it this time, I kept asking myself: why did I feel pulled back to this story?I’m at a threshold in my own life. I am re-entering the workforce but not in the way I have before. Not as the corporate executive climbing someone else’s ladder. Not as the high-performing operator inside someone else’s system.I am entering as a new leader.A sovereign leader.I am stepping into consulting, advising executives and organizations that need clarity, structure, and a disciplined path forward. I am building something aligned with my values, not just my resume.Before launching my company Anthilles Consulting, I tested the waters with mentors and friends. Almost all of them discouraged me. Consulting, they said, is uphill. Unsteady income. Harder path. Risky. Why not take the stable role? The big check? The known structure?And they weren’t wrong.I do need to work. I do need to make money.But I have arrived at a point in my life where building something I believe in matters more than chasing something impressive. Where living aligned with my values matters more than external validation. Where I would rather forge a future I am proud to inhabit than inherit one that feels misaligned.Today I saw a quote from Simon Sinek:“When we work hard for something we don’t believe in, it’s called stress. When we work hard for something we love, it’s called passion.” That word “passion”, is what called me back to this documentary.It wasn’t about politics.It was about refusal.Refusal to align with the status quo simply because it is comfortable. Refusal to stay small because the system prefers predictability. Refusal to let fear dictate the shape of your life.There is a scene where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the candidates for congress, is standing on the street with her niece, handing out pamphlets, trying to engage a passing crowd. She tells her, “For every ten no’s, we get one yes.”That line stayed with me.Ten no’s. One yes.In the end, she became a U.S. Representative in 2019. She has continued to impress me with her intelligence, perseverance, and clarity under pressure. Regardless of anyone’s political stance, what is undeniable is this: she persevered.Despite doubt. Despite dismissal. Despite being told she didn’t belong.And that is what resonated.Because building my consulting practice feels like standing on that street. Offering something. Being met with silence. Rejection. Indifference. And trusting that the one aligned “yes” will come.If not me, then who? If not now, then when?I am forging my own path despite the naysayers, despite the fear that occasionally creeps in, despite the quiet question of “will I succeed?”I believe what I am building is right. Not easy, but right.And I trust that I will meet the right people along the way. The aligned ones. The ones who value clarity over chaos. Integrity over noise. Structure over ego.Maybe that’s why I watched the film again.Not to admire someone else knocking on doors.But to remind myself that I am knocking on my own.And I intend to keep knocking.And so will I.

Knocking on My Own Door

Originally written for Substack <a href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/just-begin" data-mce-href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/just-begin" title="Just Begin">https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/just-begin</a>This week felt big, though not in a loud or celebratory way. More like one of those internal shifts that you notice only because something settles. On Tuesday, I published my company’s website, <a data-mce-href="anthilles.com" href="anthilles.com">anthilles.com</a>, and shared it publicly. What stayed with me wasn’t the fact that it was live, but that I built it myself. That still feels slightly strange to say out loud.I tried building that website twice last year and failed both times. The first attempt was while I was still fully in the corporate world. I didn’t yet know how I wanted to position myself, my thinking was unfinished, and the content felt off. I hated the process. Nothing flowed, nothing clicked, and every step felt like resistance. I quit quickly, convinced that eventually I would just hire someone to do it because this clearly wasn’t my thing. The second attempt came at the end of the year, during my third month of sabbatical. By then, I had clarity. I knew what I wanted to say. The ideas were shaped and ready. And still, the process felt heavy and technical and frustrating. I gave up after one day and didn’t think much more about it.&nbsp; Around that same time, something else was happening. I started painting unintentionally, and without agenda. It simply began coming out of me. Then poetry followed. Then longer writing. At the time, I didn’t frame it as healing, but looking back, it clearly was. Something old was loosening, moving, finding language. Eventually, I felt the need for a small corner of the internet, not to sell or promote anything, but simply to hold what was emerging. Something for me. Something for the future. A place for legacy, maybe.Building <a data-mce-href="dorotacastillostudio.com" href="dorotacastillostudio.com">dorotacastillostudio.com</a> was a completely different experience. It was light and intuitive and genuinely enjoyable. I didn’t fight the process once. I remember asking myself why this felt so different from building Anthilles, why one experience was so fluid while the other had been so full of resistance.About a week after publishing that site, almost without thinking too much about it, I decided to try again with Anthilles. And this time, it was easy. I knew what I wanted it to look like. I knew how I wanted to speak. I understood who it was for. The structure made sense, the words landed, and within a week the site was finished and ready to be published.At the same time, I was experiencing something very similar with a painting. I’m working on a landscape for my son (mountains, valleys, trees) following a YouTube time-lapse painting process clip. The video is thirty minutes long. After six hours of work spread across three days I realized I had progressed four minutes into the video.<figure id="figure-9in3xy801ymlbaklc3" class="selected"><img id="9in3xy801ymlbaklc3" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/16pYPDhgHx34snh9Jz6d9P7luyk3r1mHm8kjZoivaGgXcoRZk9yGiBtqjAIX6XSk.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/16pYPDhgHx34snh9Jz6d9P7luyk3r1mHm8kjZoivaGgXcoRZk9yGiBtqjAIX6XSk.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure><figure id="figure-6rsz63dxubmlbalek6"><img id="6rsz63dxubmlbalek6" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/386jAbAllt86FVpfRo5Tm8BHLqBt7txnV6IHUwLhyxt9fztPEAV3pevTEAFsxSBG.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/386jAbAllt86FVpfRo5Tm8BHLqBt7txnV6IHUwLhyxt9fztPEAV3pevTEAFsxSBG.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>When I finally sat down and looked at how much of the video was still ahead of me, I felt overwhelmed. There was so much left to do, and suddenly it became clear that this painting might take weeks, maybe even months. I put my brushes away and avoided the canvas for over a week. Every time I looked at it, all I could see was what wasn’t done yet.Then I had a conversation with a former coworker. She was overwhelmed with work: things breaking, tasks piling up, nothing moving forward. I listened, and at some point I offered an outsider’s perspective. I told her that when you get in your car to drive from your home to New York, you don’t see the entire road ahead of you. You see your driveway, maybe the end of your street. As you drive, the path reveals itself, and you make decisions along the way, highway or side roads. All you have to do is begin.After we hung up, my own words landed differently. I realized I wasn’t overwhelmed by the painting itself; I was overwhelmed by imagining the entire painting at once. I had forgotten that the joy lives in painting the part that’s in front of you, not in carrying the whole thing in your mind. The next day, I sat down again. Three hours passed without effort. The painting shifted, gained depth, gained perspective. There is still so much left to do, and somehow that no longer matters. I love painting.<figure id="figure-g5kisak9mlbambcc"><img id="g5kisak9mlbambcc" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/27wGGZFV9uQdKHw7iZUehRx5aszPLp8MHanCiaJxmnbrSLkPAtKN3uMW04HptjY7.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/27wGGZFV9uQdKHw7iZUehRx5aszPLp8MHanCiaJxmnbrSLkPAtKN3uMW04HptjY7.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>And almost immediately, the same realization connected back to building the website. The earlier versions of Anthilles hadn’t failed because I wasn’t capable. They failed because I wasn’t ready to see only the driveway. I was trying to see the entire road before I had even started moving.This feels important to name. Most things don’t feel heavy because they’re hard. They feel heavy because we demand clarity about the entire journey before allowing ourselves to begin. And again and again, what I’m being reminded of is this: you don’t need to see the whole path. You only need to take the first step. The rest reveals itself as you move.I’m noticing how often this lesson keeps returning, and how patiently it waits for me to catch up.

Just Begin.

Dorota Castillo Studio

Dorota Castillo Art & Poetry Studio is a personal creative space for intuitive painting and poetic expression. Dorota’s work explores inner transformation, symbolism, and emotion through color and movement, guided by process rather than perfection. Each piece invites reflection, resonance, and a felt connection beyond words.