“Addiction to work” is increasingly common amongst career-conscious people, especially it their forties and fifties. The pernicious cycle begins with wanting to progress and the perceived need to be seen to be a high performer worthy of promotion. Success leads to intensified focus on achieving more and more, in pursuit of the next career goal. Gradually, the executive is so focused on doing that they forget about being. One of the casualties in this process is their emotional canvas – without realising it, their emotional life becomes thinner and thinner. Hence, it is sometimes described as “skinny living” – having all the benefits of relative wealth, but being unable to fully enjoy it. The ability to relax and regenerate fades – it becomes increasingly hard to be at peace with themselves and the world around them. Divorce, burnout and other catastrophes are only a step away.

How can coaches and mentors help? We can support them in recognising what parts of their emotional self they have lost and in reconnecting with them.

Two of the key emotions are joy and awe. Here are some starter questions to open up a conversation:

• When did you last experience stillness and tranquillity?
• How often do you stop and look around you (for real and / or mentally) for a few minutes?
• If/ when you do, what do you notice?
• When did you last feel “Wow”!
• When did you last feel truly humble?
• What do you do to be at peace with the world and with yourself?
• What do you do to celebrate being alive? How often?
• How aware are you of how you are living your core values?
• What did you last do to bring joy to someone else?
• When did you last laugh at yourself?
• When did you bring a genuine smile to other people’s faces?
• How often do you do a sense-check on “what and who I am doing this for?”
• Who will genuinely miss you when you go? (Not just at work!)
• Would you choose you as a trusted, reliable best friend?
• Who would you want to write your epitaph? (Not: what do you want your epitaph to be?)
• How much more could you achieve by doing less?

So, how do you bring questions like these into the coaching or mentoring conversation? A simple positioning is to explain that jumping straight into discussing an issue tends to push the conversation down established tramlines, making it harder to think creatively. The quality of dialogue will be higher, if you start from an unexpected direction. Or to put it another way, do they want to approach an issue with linear thinking or systemic thinking? If the latter, exploring their internal and external systems first is a much more useful starting point.

©️David Clutterbuck, 2026