Trailblazers’ Stories: not-your-average Blog
Here you’ll find more than 450 full-lenght articles, most 4000 words+, about subjects that would interest people who are navigating huge life changes, challenges and crises and are starting the next chapters in their lives. Most articles feature the story of someone who had to cope with a life-altering crisis. Maybe you’ll find the story of someone who survived the exact same crisis as you are facing? You can use the search function below to find inspiring stories:
Here are the main themes:
1. Retreats – Stress Dissolvers & Direction Finders – The transformative power of retreat experiences for people navigating major life transitions, career pivots, and personal crossroads. Explore how stepping away creates space for clarity, renewal, and intentional next chapters.
2. Horses – Partners in Transformation – How equine-assisted learning can accelerate emotional healing, build self-awareness, and guide stressed professionals toward their next chapter with wisdom that only horses can provide.
3. Navigating Life Changes, Challenges & Crises – Practical strategies and emotional support for weathering life’s storms—from unexpected upheavals to planned transitions. Learn to navigate uncertainty with resilience and emotional adaptability during pivotal life moments.
4. Burnout & Stress Management in Transition – Understanding why life transitions amplify stress and burnout risk. Science-backed approaches to managing acute and chronic stress when you’re already navigating significant personal or professional change.
5. Life Purpose – The Foundation of New Beginnings – Discovering and reconnecting with your deeper purpose during times of change. Explore why clarity of purpose is essential when reinventing your life, career, or identity.
6. Emotional Intelligence, Empathy, Self-Awareness & Mindfulness – Developing the inner resources that make transitions smoother. Cultivate emotional maturity, self-compassion, and mindful practices that support you through life’s most challenging passages.
7. Reinvention and Reconstruction after a Major Life Change – Navigate relationship shifts, empty nests, health scares, career pivots, redundancies, retirement, relocation, professional success without fulfillment, and find clarity for your next chapter.
8. Grief, Loss & Legacy – Honouring what’s been lost while creating meaningful legacy. Process grief from death, relationship endings, or life chapter closures, and discover how loss can transform into purposeful living.
9. Nature, Sustainability & Slow and Solo Travel – Reconnecting with natural rhythms as an antidote to modern overwhelm. Embrace sustainable, intentional living that supports well-being during life transitions and beyond.
10. Writing, Reading & Storytelling – How words heal and transform during major life changes. Explore writing your story, reading for solace and inspiration, book reviews, and storytelling circles as powerful tools for processing transition.
Margaretha Montagu
For those passing through La Ville Rose on their way to my Camino de Santiago Crossroads retreats Ecoute, I could tell you to visit the Basilique Saint-Sernin (spoiler: you absolutely should – it's a must-see!). But if you're not here...
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Margaretha Montagu
-James Clear, Atomic Habits What this is: A reality check for ambitious professionals who've discovered that setting bigger goals somehow leads to feeling smaller. This is about why your immaculate goal-setting spreadsheet hasn't changed your life, and what actually will....
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Margaretha Montagu
What this is: A practical guide to transforming your relationship with stress from exhausting reactive firefighting into strategic fuel that actually enhances performance. Think of it as upgrading your internal operating system without losing the edge that got you here....
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Margaretha Montagu
What this is: A practical, psychologically-grounded exploration of boundary-setting for empaths who feel everything, absorb everyone's emotions, and then wonder why they're perpetually knackered. This is your permission slip to protect your energy without guilt, backed by Jungian wisdom and...
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Margaretha Montagu
What this isn't: Another productivity hack. Another time management system. Another "10 ways to optimise your morning routine" listicle. If you're looking for tips on inbox zero or batch processing meetings, this isn't your article. Also not here: toxic positivity...
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Margaretha Montagu
What this is: A medically-informed, deeply human exploration of how chronic stress and anxiety can damage your body, brain, and future—and what you can actually do about it before the damage becomes irreversible. What this isn't: Another guilt-inducing wellness sermon...
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Margaretha Montagu
What this is: A compassionate, research-informed exploration of why successful people struggle with comparison—and a practical roadmap for redirecting that energy into genuine self-knowledge and resilience. What this isn't: Another hollow "just be grateful" lecture, a collection of platitudes about...
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Margaretha Montagu
Why the Most Successful People Struggle Most with Liminal Spaces (And What to Do About It) What this is: A deep dive into why we find "in-between" moments excruciating, what anthropology teaches us about transformation, and how to stop filling...
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Margaretha Montagu
Jane Goodall spent 65 years watching chimpanzees, and in doing so, taught humanity something profound: purpose isn't something you find on a weekend workshop or discover during a mid-morning epiphany whilst reorganising your sock drawer. It's something you commit to...
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Margaretha Montagu
What You're About to Read (And Why You Should) Right now, you're probably reading this between meetings, or whilst pretending to listen to someone drone on about Q4 targets, or perhaps at 23H55 when you've finally closed your laptop but...
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Margaretha Montagu
I need six months of vacation, twice a year. You're contemplating solo travel but terrified you'll end up sobbing into your overpriced airport coffee? Or perhaps you've already booked that ticket and now you're catastrophising about everything from pickpockets to...
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Margaretha Montagu
Look, we've all seen those morning routines videos. You know the ones: someone wakes up at 4:47 AM looking suspiciously well-rested, drinks lemon water while watching the sunrise, journals their gratitude, does yoga on a pristine white rug with their...
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Margaretha Montagu
What You'll Discover in This Article: You're successful. You're accomplished. You run companies, manage teams, juggle impossible deadlines, and somehow still make it to your daughter's piano recital. So why does everything feel like you're perpetually running to catch a...
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Margaretha Montagu
For over a thousand years, pilgrims have made their way across Europe to Santiago de Compostela, each one carrying their own questions, their own burdens, their own hopes. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once observed, "Europe was made by pilgrimages...
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Margaretha Montagu
A Guide to Rediscovering Yourself When the Kids Leave Home The Sharp Overview: What You're About to Read So the last child has packed their dubiously laundered clothes, grabbed their childhood teddy bear (the one they swore they'd outgrown), and...
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Margaretha Montagu
Summary:Forget the Hollywood version of transformation—burn your old self, rise like a phoenix, better than ever before etc. etc. etc. Impressive, but not helpful when you’re just trying to survive till Tuesday. When your nervous system is screaming for relief,...
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Margaretha Montagu
#Stress Relief Techniques Here's what I've learned after two decades of watching executives burn out in slow motion: they don't need 60 minutes of yoga. They need 60 seconds of recovery on demand. Last Tuesday, I watched a CEO take...
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Margaretha Montagu
Why Your Retreat Participants Need the Opportunity to Tell Their Truth The Most Powerful Transformative Tool Hiding in Plain Sight So. You're leading a wellness retreat in paradise—pristine meditation halls, organic meals, Instagram-worthy sunrises. Your participants dutifully follow the schedule:...
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Margaretha Montagu
Your Secret Weapon Against Modern Burnout Storytelling? while you're drowning in deadlines, your inbox is a digital avalanche, and your stress levels are somewhere between "astronaut launch sequence" and "contestant on reality TV?" What if I told you that the...
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Margaretha Montagu
Most professionals don't see the difference until they've already crossed the line. Last month, a brilliant C-suite executive sat across from me, her usual commanding presence replaced by something I'd seen too many times before. "I thought I was just...
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Margaretha Montagu
It's Not About Owning Less. It's About Owning More Valuable Things Summary: Forget everything you've been told about downsizing being about sacrifice and deprivation. This article challenges the mainstream narrative that smaller means lesser, revealing how strategic downsizing actually multiplies...
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Margaretha Montagu
Leaders tell me: "Balance is impossible. If I slow down, I fall behind. If I keep going, I burn out." Jennifer, a Senior Vice President at a tech company, put it perfectly: "Everyone talks about work-life balance like I should...
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Margaretha Montagu
24 Simple Practices for Building Resilience Introduction Resilience is basically the difference between people who get knocked down and stay down versus those who dust their resilience toolkit off, get back up and keep going. Think about it - we...
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Margaretha Montagu
I hear this constantly from executives: "I sleep, but I never feel restored. It's like my brain is still running flat out even while I'm in bed." Rachel, a Chief Marketing Officer, described it perfectly: "I go to sleep thinking...
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Margaretha Montagu
Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative I’ve always believed in supporting other authors-especially non-fiction authors-and one of the ways I do that is by sharing book reviews. I focus on the books that have truly shaped how...
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Margaretha Montagu
Can Joining a Range of Activities, Interests and Community Groups Make You Happier, Healthier and reveal How To Recover From Burnout? Quick Take: Your LinkedIn network might be impressive, but when did you last laugh until your sides hurt with...
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Margaretha Montagu
#Operation Optimism: A 7-Day Mindset Makeover Before Surgery Part 3 Surgery Less Stressful Meet Sarah, a 58-year-old teacher who was scheduled for major abdominal surgery last spring. Like most of us facing the operating table, she was terrified. Her blood...
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Margaretha Montagu
Executives often give their best to their work — and their leftovers to their family. I hear this all the time from executives I work with: "By the time I get home, I'm drained. My team gets my best. My...
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Margaretha Montagu
Summary Anxiety loves a stationary target. While our minds spiral into catastrophic thinking, our bodies remain frozen – and therein lies the trap. Action, however small, disrupts anxiety's stranglehold by engaging our physiology, shifting our focus, and proving that we're...
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Margaretha Montagu
Summary: If you are an emotionally regulated adult, you don't explode in meetings, implode over spilt coffee, or need wine to "decompress" from Tuesday. Emotionally regulated adults have cracked the code that eludes most hardworking professionals: feeling all the feelings...
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