Some of the best moments of my life were ones I never planned. They came when I was looking the other way, in the middle of an ordinary afternoon, and they stayed with me long after far bigger events had faded. I find myself thinking about this more and more, which is a strange admission from someone who spends her working life advising on leadership, succession, and the transfer of serious wealth. The longer I do that work, the clearer it becomes that the decisions which change a life are seldom the ones that announce themselves in a meeting.
This is the first instalment of what will become a regular column in Ladies Drive, and each one will return to the same question that has quietly organised my career: where is the compass pointing? I gave up on perfect answers a long time ago, because direction has proved far more useful than certainty. Most of us keep looking for the right plan, when the clues are already there in what draws us in and what wears us down.
Which brings me to joy, and to why it belongs in a magazine about business rather than one about holidays. The phrase “surprised by joy” comes from William Wordsworth and was later borrowed by C. S. Lewis for the title of his memoir. They did not use it in precisely the same way, but both were concerned with joy that arrives unbidden, when you are not looking for it. We are taught that joy is something to be saved for the weekend and set aside during the working week, as though it has no real place in the serious business of building a life. I have never found that to be true. The two have always belonged together.
I have watched some of the most consequential decisions of my clients’ lives turn on something that looked, on closer inspection, remarkably like joy. One was a founder who sold a thriving company the moment he admitted that running it had stopped lighting him up. Another was a daughter who left the path her family had mapped for her and became the most contented person at the table. A third was a senior leader who walked away from a role most people would envy, because she wanted a life that matched the woman she had grown into. By the usual logic, none of these decisions added up. Each was driven by something felt rather than something proven, and each one turned out to be right.
My friend Claudia Gabler said something that stuck with me: that happiness does not always have to be chased and is sometimes simply permitted to find you. A happiness permission slip, she calls it. Joy is allowed to find us, even when we are not looking for it. It is a generous idea, and I think it is only half true. Joy may well arrive uninvited, yet whether we notice it when it does is entirely a matter of practice.
Dr Christian Busch, who wrote The Serendipity Mindset, argues much the same about luck. Serendipity, he suggests, is less an accident than a way of seeing. Two people can live through an identical day and walk away with completely different accounts of it: one notices the opportunity, the warmth, and the small beauty in the corner of the afternoon, while the other sees only the traffic and the unanswered emails. The difference lies in what each of them was paying attention to.
Joy works the same way. It seldom announces itself, and it usually comes in fragments: a conversation that follows you home, a child laughing in the back seat, a book that lands in your hands at precisely the right moment, or a sunrise through an airport window after a flight you resented. On its own, no single moment seems to count for much. Taken together, they leave a trail.
So I have come to treat joy less as a reward waiting at the end of something and more as live information about the life you are in. When a moment genuinely delights you, it is telling you something true about who you are becoming and the life you are quietly trying to build.
The past few years have asked a great deal of me. I moved countries and started again. I lost a child late in pregnancy, at the point when you have already begun to imagine the whole life. I became a mother again at an age when many people assume they have already finished deciding who they are. I launched ventures, closed chapters, wrote books, and sat with families through real uncertainty. Some of it was the ordinary exhaustion of a full life, and some of it broke my heart, yet what stays with me when I look back is rarely the hardship. I remember the sea, conversations that ran well past midnight, laughter I did not see coming, the weight of my daughter in my arms, and the speed at which time was moving. None of it appeared on a strategic plan, and all of it shaped me more than most of my objectives ever did.
This belongs in business too. We talk endlessly about vision, mission, and goals, and rarely about curiosity, delight, and fascination, which are often the forces that keep people building for decades. Entrepreneurs tend to construct companies around a problem they cannot stop thinking about. Legacies often begin with a single decision to take seriously what feels meaningful.
The families I advise spend a great deal of time on wealth transfer. The ones who do it well spend just as long on values, purpose, and fulfilment, because every family eventually meets the same question. What are we building all of this for? Joy does not answer that on its own. It does point towards what energises us, what connects us, and what makes the achievement worth keeping.
There is a sharper edge to this as well. The fashionable anxiety is FOMO, the fear of missing out. I have far more time for its quieter cousin, JOMO, the joy of missing out. Some of the most composed people I work with have learned that letting the wrong opportunities pass is itself a form of direction. It can look like a loss from the outside. From where they sit, it is simply a clear compass reading.
When was the last time joy caught you off guard and redirected you?
COMPASS POINT
Joy leaves clues. Few joyful moments deserve a life-changing decision, though almost all of them deserve your attention. The experiences that keep sparking curiosity, gratitude, and wonder usually reveal more about your direction than any five-year plan. The discipline is in noticing them.
COMPASS EXERCISE
For the next seven days, keep what I call a Compass Log. Each evening, write down one moment that lifted you without warning. It does not need to be an accomplishment or anything you set out to do. It might be a conversation that stayed with you, the smell of rain on a warm pavement, a song you heard at the right time, or a small and unearned sense of connection. One honest moment a day is enough.
At the end of the week, read the list back. Notice what recurs, what you find yourself wanting more of, and what you have been walking past without seeing. Usually, the pattern is already pointing somewhere, and the only thing missing is your attention.
Where is your compass pointing?
