Ariane de Bonvoisin has lived many lives.

An international swimmer in her teens, she graduated from university at 19, worked in consulting firm BCG, went to Stanford Business School, entered venture capital, and by her late twenties had become a managing director at Time Warner’s $500 million digital media fund.

And then it all fell apart.

In this conversation, Ariane and I explore what happens when the external story of success no longer fits with deeper truths of who a person really is — and what that might mean not only for individuals, but for leadership, work and society as a whole.

Ariane is best known for her work on change, but our conversation goes into fresh territory: the body as a source of truth, the impossibility of living two separate lives and identities, and the moment when success becomes impossible if it's not 100% aligned.

We talk about her childhood across seven countries and three continents, the family instability that gave her drive, and the “chronic self-sufficiency” that helped her achieve but also eventually had to be unwound.

One of the most powerful moments comes when Ariane describes finding herself in a New York clinic, covered in eczema and on two medical drips, realising that she was “allergic” to her own life.

From there, we explore change not as a productivity strategy or self-improvement exercise, but as an identity shift you are never completely in control of — the moment when the life you live can no longer carry the person you are becoming.

We discuss:

• How many achievers have two bios: the external CV and the real, hidden one
• Why the body often knows the truth before the mind does
• Optimism and the danger of bypassing grief
• Privilege, control and access to transformation
• Feelings, spirit and intuition in leadership
• The fear of disappointing others
• Children, technology and the future of human aliveness
• Why the emotional body matters as much as the physical body
• The “S word” — and why spirituality is still so hard to talk about in serious adult life

Ariane’s current work focuses explicitly on bringing together the worlds of success and spirituality. Her podcast, The Spirit Collective, speaks with people known for public achievement about the spiritual path behind their lives.

This is a conversation about work, change, embodiment, intuition and the deeper life asking to be lived beneath whatever it is you are presenting.

Ariane de Bonvoisin — https://www.arianedebonvoisin.com
The Spirit Collective — https://spiritcollective.com
Spirit Mama — https://spiritmamabook.com

I know very little about philosophy but I like it when a random dad in a kids playground starts talking about Wittgenstein and the reality-shaping assumptions of language.

Rich Watkins definitely passes the bar of being an over-achiever. He entered the world of business at 16, became the youngest innovation consultant at pioneering agency What If, travelled the world advising organisations, and eventually built his own practice around helping people work together better.

But more excitingly (for me), Rich has DIY-assembled a coherent philosophical outlook on life and work that, by comparison, makes my thinking feel fuzzy and unexamined.

In this conversation we explore what happened when the scaffolding of Rich's over-achieving began to fall away — and how he gradually moved from orientating himself around what the world rewards towards a more embodied sense of what he actually cares about.

Drawing on thinkers including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Virginia Satir and Donna Haraway, Rich describes ideas not as maps telling us where to go, but as lenses or compasses that help us see our situations differently.

We talk about why so many of our models of leadership and teamwork are already out of date; why human beings live inside language rather than simply using it; and why the ability to notice our own defensiveness, assumptions and inherited ways of seeing may matter more than finding the “right” model.

Topics include:

• Moving from external validation towards embodiment and desire
• Wittgenstein, language games and the “city” of language
• Ideas as lenses rather than maps
• Why old models of teams and leadership stop fitting reality
• Virginia Satir, defensiveness and how we relate
• Intensity, hyperfocus and learning to make space for softness
• Donna Haraway and “staying with the trouble”
• Optimism, uncertainty and doing the next right thing
• Dialogue as a practice for seeing more clearly

Explore further:

• Rich Watkins — website
• Rich on Wittgenstein and language
• Ludwig Wittgenstein — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Martin Heidegger — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Virginia Satir Global Network
• Donna Haraway — Staying with the Trouble
• David Bohm — On Dialogue

Oliver Burkeman has a brutal but liberating message - you will never do it all. Accept that and the real work can begin.

In this expansive chat, Oliver (journalist and author of Four Thousand Weeks, Meditations for Mortals, The Imperfectionist), joins me to explore the counterintuitive truth at the heart of modern life: that embracing limits is the gateway to living well.

We talk about insecure overachieving, parenting, Zen, email, death, and the strange liberation that comes from realising it’s all going to be a mess anyway. Oliver shares his own journey from perfectionism to “imperfectionism,” and we dig into what it really means to live a finite, meaningful, creative life in the age of infinite demands.

If you're a high-functioning procrastinator like me, battling endlessly with the hydra of your never ending self-expectations—you're going to like this.

We cover:

• The 4-hour workday principle
• Insecure overachievement: the emotional engine behind ambition
• Why facing our mortality clarifies things
• Zen, Stoicism, and the power of giving up
• How parenthood changes your relationship with time
• Email overwhelm, control-freakery, and the illusion of perfect systems
• Internal Family Systems (IFS), Focusing and the many parts within us
• What organizations and leaders can learn from “imperfectionism”
• Whether meaningful societal change can emerge from individual awakening
• Morning pages and the one practice Oliver always returns to

Why Listen:

If you ever feel crushed under the weight of your own dreams, stuck in a loop of planning without doing, or haunted by the feeling that you will die unfulfilled—this conversation will soothe you with a balm of friendly rationality and offer poetic license to just be and do the best you can.