January 1st marks the beginning of a new year. For some, it represents hope and expectation. For others, it’s a signal that the holiday pause is over and the familiar grind is about to resume.

Wake up. Go to work. Come home. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

If you think about it, there’s a beautiful rhythm to it all. The predictability of routine. The comfort of knowing how your day will unfold. We work to earn money, to build safe homes, to care for our families, to have a place to rest our weary heads at night. And if we’re honest, most of us would agree that safety, certainty, and comfort rank pretty high on our list of what makes a good life.

But what if comfort isn’t neutral? What if, over time, comfort quietly persuades us to stay small? What if it’s the very thing keeping us from stepping into our potential? What if comfort is the enemy of calling?

I didn’t realize how bad I was at saying “thank you” until someone asked if my team even knew I appreciated them. Like many leaders, I’ve had seasons of overwhelming busyness, where I’ve struggled with offering the kind of praise that actually lands. Now, before you jump in to reassure me that I’m being too hard on myself, let me spotlight a moment that made me pause.

I was chatting with a colleague about an event we had just run that went really, really well. After a bit of back and forth about the wins, she casually said, “Sarah has no clue if you even liked what she produced.”

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, shall we? Generative AI - whether your feelings about it are good, bad or indifferent - is here to stay. To say that it’s transforming the way we live, work and play, would be the understatement of the millennia. From research to copy writing, data analysis to complex problem solving, automations to artistic design, its impact is prolific and can be seen everywhere. We’re in a time where “prompt engineers” are in high demand, and hiring managers are filtering for AI literacy in resumes. The question is no longer whether to use AI or not, because its pervasiveness makes that entirely a non-option.

Welcome to The Legacy Builders — a special feature series I’ve created as Co-Editor of BE Magazine’s Work section. I launched this series to spotlight women who are doing more than showing up for a job — they’re leading with conviction, building with purpose, and using their work to leave something that lasts.

The calendar says September 1st, but your brain’s at the beach, still in vacation mode. Guess what? You’re not alone. Everyone’s thinking the same thing: “Didn’t we just start the summer? How did we get to September already?” And not just that, but also: “What do you mean there are only four months left in the year?” Disclaimer: take a breath and keep reading. Don’t worry, we cover that scary countdown further on.

Welcome to The Legacy Builders — a special feature series I’ve created as Co-Editor of BE Magazine’s Work section. I launched this series to spotlight women who are doing more than showing up for a job — they’re leading with conviction, building with purpose, and using their work to leave something that lasts.

the bigger culprit is our growing aversion to the messy middle of persevering through the hard work that’s often riddled with failures on our journey to success.  One of the dangers of AI is its ability to produce fast results.  Today it takes very little expertise creating AI prompts to “ChatGPT” a business plan in seconds or create an illustration of a garden.  It takes very little effort to skip the messy middle entirely.  Why wait months, weeks, days or even hours when you can have what you want in minutes?

Hang around offices and boardrooms long enough and you’re bound to hear buzzwords like “purpose,” “impact,” and “disruptive” being tossed around. But did you know that long before these terms were trendy, one 18th-century entrepreneur was literally living them out. His name was Arthur Guinness: founder of the 260-year-old beer brand we know today as Guinness.

Irrespective of where you’ve worked, at some point in your life, you’ve probably heard the phrase ‘Hope is not a strategy’ – meaning that hope is nothing more than a ‘passive, blind desire that a certain thing will happen’. By this definition, hope is the sad state of being you grasp for when you can’t act.

Irrespective of where you’ve worked, at some point in your life, you’ve probably heard the phrase ‘Hope is not a strategy’ – meaning that hope is nothing more than a ‘passive, blind desire that a certain thing will happen’. By this definition, hope is the sad state of being you grasp for when you can’t act.