How Women Leaders Can Refocus, Build Resilience and Navigate What’s Next

There are certain seasons in life when you realize you’ve been moving so quickly that you haven’t actually stopped to think about where you’re going. You wake up, answer the emails, get through the meetings, take care of everyone around you, meet the deadline, jump on the next call and, before you know it, another month has passed. From the outside, everything might look like it’s going well, but internally, you might be asking yourself whether the way you’re spending your time and energy still reflects the life and career you actually want.

I’ve had those moments myself, and I’ve had so many conversations with leaders, particularly women working across travel, retail, hospitality and other fast-moving industries, who have found themselves asking the same question: Where do I go from here?

I don’t think the answer is always to push harder. In fact, sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is pause long enough to refocus.

Refocus Before You Rebuild Your Career

We’re surrounded by messages telling us to keep going, keep growing, keep achieving and keep pushing ourselves to the next level, but there are moments when we need to step back and ask whether we’re actually moving in the right direction. Refocusing isn’t about throwing everything away or deciding that you’ve somehow got your life wrong; it’s about creating enough space to look at what’s working, what’s no longer working and what you want to be different moving forward.

For many women, particularly those who’ve built successful careers, this can be surprisingly difficult. When you’ve become the person everyone relies on, it can feel uncomfortable to admit that you’re tired, that your priorities have changed or that the definition of success you were working toward no longer feels like yours. I’ve worked with women who are incredibly accomplished but are still asking themselves whether they’re doing enough, whether they’re ready for the next opportunity or whether they have earned the right to take up more space. Sometimes the real work isn’t becoming more capable; it’s recognizing the capability that’s already there.

The American Psychological Association defines resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress, and one of the most encouraging things about that definition is the recognition that resilience is something we can develop. We aren’t simply born with a fixed amount of resilience that determines how well we’ll handle everything life throws at us. We can develop the skills, habits, relationships and ways of thinking that help us navigate change more effectively, which means that refocusing can actually be part of building resilience rather than something we do only after we’ve reached a breaking point.

Leadership Growth Doesn’t Always Mean Moving Up

When we talk about rising, we often picture something obvious from the outside, such as a promotion, a new title, launching a business, stepping onto a bigger stage or finally reaching a goal we’ve been working toward for years. Those moments are important, but some of the most meaningful moments of growth are much less visible, particularly when we’re talking about women and leadership.

Sometimes rising means finally speaking up in the meeting when you’ve spent years questioning whether your opinion is important enough. Sometimes it means putting yourself forward for the opportunity rather than waiting until someone notices how capable you are, or having the confidence to say that you’re ready for more responsibility without feeling as though you have to prove yourself 10 times over before you can say it. Sometimes it means recognizing that the version of leadership you’ve been trying to emulate doesn’t actually fit who you are and giving yourself permission to lead in a way that feels authentic to you.

I’ve seen this particularly with women in travel and retail, two industries that are incredibly people-driven, constantly changing and often demanding, where women make up a significant part of the workforce but aren’t always represented equally at the highest levels. Research from Equality in Tourism has highlighted the continued gap between women’s participation in tourism and their representation in senior decision-making roles, while initiatives such as Women Leading Travel continue to showcase women who are shaping the future of the industry across travel, hospitality, technology, airlines and destinations.

For me, those conversations aren’t just about statistics or representation; they’re about what happens when women start to see themselves as leaders before someone else gives them the title. Leadership isn’t something that suddenly appears on the day you receive a promotion. It’s something you practice through the way you communicate, make decisions, navigate uncertainty, develop other people and respond when things don’t go according to plan.

And sometimes you become confident because you were willing to take the step before you felt completely confident.

Resilience Isn’t About Pushing Through

I think we’ve sometimes misunderstood what resilience is supposed to look like, particularly in professional environments where being able to handle pressure can almost become a badge of honor. We’re expected to keep performing, keep smiling, keep delivering and somehow demonstrate that nothing gets to us, but that’s not resilience. Pretending you’re fine when you’re exhausted doesn’t make you resilient, and carrying everything alone doesn’t make you stronger.

Real resilience requires a level of self-awareness because you have to be willing to recognize what’s happening before you can decide how you want to respond. Sometimes resilience means continuing forward when things get difficult, but sometimes it means asking for support, changing direction, setting a boundary, taking a step back or admitting that the way you’ve been doing something isn’t sustainable.

This is something I come back to often in my work with leaders because sustainable performance isn’t about seeing how much pressure you can tolerate before something gives. It’s about understanding yourself well enough to know what allows you to perform at your best and creating the conditions that support that performance over time.

Our relationships are a big part of that, and the American Psychological Association identifies supportive connections as an important component of resilience because we aren’t designed to navigate every difficult season completely on our own. Think about the people who have helped you through your most challenging moments, whether that was a mentor who saw something in you that you couldn’t yet see yourself, a colleague who encouraged you to take a bigger opportunity, a friend who reminded you who you were when work had consumed your entire identity or a leader who gave you the confidence to take the next step.

Those people matter, and that’s one of the reasons I’m such a strong believer in mentorship, community and creating spaces where women can learn from one another rather than feeling as though everyone has to figure out leadership alone.

You Don’t Have to Start Over to Move Forward

One of the biggest things I’d like people to take away from this is that feeling stuck doesn’t necessarily mean you need to start over. Sometimes you simply need to come back to yourself and reconnect with what matters to you, particularly when you’ve spent a long time meeting everyone else’s expectations and putting your own needs further down the list.

Maybe you’ve outgrown a goal that once motivated you, maybe your definition of success has changed or maybe you’ve achieved the thing you thought would make you feel fulfilled and discovered that you’re ready for something else. None of those things mean you’ve failed. They mean you’re paying attention, and I believe that self-awareness is one of the most important parts of personal and professional growth.

This is a big part of the work I do through coaching, leadership development and my Roadmap to Resilience work, where I encourage people to look beyond simply trying to “push through” difficult experiences and instead understand the patterns, beliefs and behaviors that influence how they show up. Real change doesn’t usually happen because we have one incredibly motivating day; it happens because we begin making different choices consistently and give those choices enough time to become part of who we are.

So if you’re in a season where you’re questioning what’s next, don’t feel as though you need to have the entire answer today. Start by asking yourself where your energy is going, what deserves more of your attention, what you’re ready to let go of and what you’ve been putting off because you’re waiting to feel completely ready. Then think about the people you need around you, the conversations you’ve been avoiding and the opportunity that might be sitting just outside your comfort zone.

You don’t need to completely reinvent yourself to move forward, because sometimes the next chapter begins by remembering what was already there.

Refocus your energy, rise into what’s next and build the resilience to keep moving when the path inevitably changes.

And if you’re a woman leading in travel, retail, hospitality or anywhere else where the pace is constantly changing, I hope you remember that your career doesn’t have to be defined by how much you can carry. It can also be defined by how intentionally you lead, how well you take care of yourself and others, how willing you are to keep learning and how much space you’re willing to create for the people coming behind you.

That’s where I believe the real opportunity is, because resilience isn’t simply about surviving what comes next; it’s about becoming more intentional about who you want to be when you get there.

This article was originally published on The Rise Playbook by Courtney Seard and shared with permission.