How to Get Ahead of 99.9% of People in 2026

What if I told you that you are already the CEO of one of the most important companies in the world? Because whether you wanted it or not, you are essentially the CEO of your own life. The truth is that there are two ways to approach life. Either being a passenger in life and letting life happen to you,

approach life. Either being a passenger in life and letting life happen to you, or taking the reigns, saying carpey DM and architecting your own life with intention. For years, I was in that first category. living life on autopilot reactive overwhelmed

intention. For years, I was in that first category. living life on autopilot reactive overwhelmed following the default path, and feeling lost, but not really doing anything about it until I realized that I could simply choose to view my own life like

running a company with projects, department strategy vision execution investment relationships finances growth, all of this. So, in this video, we'll walk through eight CEO level shifts that I've learned from my own businesses and life, which completely transformed how I lead my own life,

which can hopefully help you to step into your self leadership season, too.

If you're new here, my name is Izzy. I'm a mom, tech co-founder, and Cambridge trained doctor. And these eight shifts are patterns that I've noticed among

trained doctor. And these eight shifts are patterns that I've noticed among some of the highest achievers that I've met in my life. And if you're a bit like me and really interested in this intersection between personal development and entrepreneurship, then you might like to check out my completely free newsletter community, I'll leave a link down below to check it

out. So, without further ado, let's dive in. Emotional intelligence is your

out. So, without further ado, let's dive in. Emotional intelligence is your operating system. This is one of the most common blind spots, and I think

operating system. This is one of the most common blind spots, and I think about 90% of people haven't acknowledged this element of their life. Effective

leaders know that emotions are fundamental to success and performance.

There's often this narrative around like, oh, you should disregard your emotions and just do the next step and almost push yourself with discipline into doing everything. And this works for a little while until what I noticed in myself was this development of a very coercive relationship with myself where

I was essentially disciplining myself into doing everything. And as one voice in my head would discipline me into doing something, I would feel so much emotional resistance to doing it that I was almost at war with myself. The

analogy I like to use in my newsletter is I was basically slamming on the like accelerator, the gas pedal, and also the brakes at the same time and just exhausting myself. And the reason for all this friction was actually

exhausting myself. And the reason for all this friction was actually fundamentally emotions. Emotions aren't just irrational. They're actually data

fundamentally emotions. Emotions aren't just irrational. They're actually data grounded in intuition and instinct. For example, doctors when they're seeing a patient often experienced consultants will almost have this gut feeling for

which potential diagnoses feel the most likely to them. And this isn't purely informed by what they know in terms of the data or statistics. Actually, a lot of it is pattern recognition honed so finely over decades of experience which

leads to an instinctive intuition which guides their clinical decision-making.

Quality decision-m is one of the most important things for a CEO to do. And

actually without emotions and without understanding our emotions, you literally cannot make decisions. This was something that took me years to learn that emotions don't impede rational thought, they actually underpin it. There was this case study on a man who we're going to call Elliot. Elliot

it. There was this case study on a man who we're going to call Elliot. Elliot

had a tumor in his brain which needed to be excised. And the excision of this small tumor in his brain actually damaged the orbital frontal cortex of the brain just enough to remove Elliot's emotions. Before his brain tumor, Elliot

was an intelligent man with high IQ. He was married and actually after the surgery, he didn't suffer any loss in IQ. His IQ points basically stayed the same. But after his surgery, people around him noticed two main changes.

same. But after his surgery, people around him noticed two main changes.

Firstly, nothing seemed to move him emotionally. So not love or anger or fear or sadness and that's sort of expected when the part of the brain responsible for emotion gets destroyed. But the interesting bit was that along with the absence of emotion he seemed completely unable to actually make

simple decisions. This actually made normal life impossible for him and

simple decisions. This actually made normal life impossible for him and routine tasks that should take 10 minutes took hours. He would literally spend hours over minor decisions such as whether to use a blue pen or a black pen or which radio station to listen to or or which restaurant to go to for lunch.

So when he was thinking about which restaurant to go to, he would very carefully consider each restaurant's menu, the seating, the lighting, actually physically visiting each one to see how busy they were, see what they were like, he still couldn't decide. Researchers thought this was because the

emotional part of our brain is actually crucial for our decision-m and our judgment. Which means that instead of pushing away our emotions as something

judgment. Which means that instead of pushing away our emotions as something that's a hindrance to us and unhelpful, it's actually about embracing them and realizing, oh, this is actually telling me something that is useful or will help me to make decisions for my life. This also means that emotions that you are

avoiding will actually secretly run your decisions and your life in the background because whether you like it or not, they will be there and they will be influencing the decisions that you make. And what this takes really is two things. This firstly emotional awareness, understanding the emotions

things. This firstly emotional awareness, understanding the emotions that you're experiencing. And the second thing is emotional fluidity, which is embracing those and letting those emotions move through you rather than trying to suppress or reject any of them. It's actually letting them flow

and realizing that only by allowing them to flow, your actions can then come from alignment and feel easeful and joyful rather than coming from friction and coercion. The next shift is knowing the difference between your $10 tasks and

coercion. The next shift is knowing the difference between your $10 tasks and your $10,000 tasks. As the leader of your own life, your energy, time, and attention become your most valuable assets. So, it's very much worth knowing

how you're spending this precious finite resource and also your potential return on investment of this resource. Some of the tasks that we do day-to-day are $10 tasks. They don't have that much leverage or potential to generate

tasks. They don't have that much leverage or potential to generate outsized returns. They're things like picking up the groceries or cleaning

outsized returns. They're things like picking up the groceries or cleaning your bathroom or deciding what to eat for dinner. On the flip side, some tasks are $10,000 tasks. These are the ones that really move your life forward in the direction that you want. They allow you to change direction, build systems,

build relationships. Some examples for me are a $10 task I realized I was doing

build relationships. Some examples for me are a $10 task I realized I was doing was building my own IKEA furniture. when we moved into our current flat and ordered a bunch of IKEA furniture. I was so used to always just building it myself. And actually, I don't mind building it myself. It's sort of like a

myself. And actually, I don't mind building it myself. It's sort of like a bit of a chill activity. I just start putting the bits together. It can be relatively mindful. But then it was starting to pile up where there was a

relatively mindful. But then it was starting to pile up where there was a lot of furniture that we had bought which needed to be assembled. I realized

that the amount of time it would take me to assemble all of these was going to be hours. It would probably take me almost a whole day to assemble all the

hours. It would probably take me almost a whole day to assemble all the furniture for our whole house. And so I had actually started on building some of the furniture until I realized actually this task is not something that is actually going to move my life forward. I'm actually no longer enjoying it

because there's so much of it. And also it is actually just using up time which I could spend on something that is a $10,000 task rather than a $10 task. On

the flip side, my $10,000 tasks include things like filming a YouTube video, which builds my personal brand, brings in sponsorship revenue, and also actually has the potential to impact hundreds of thousands of people. And so

then if I can recognize, oh, building my own IKEA furniture is in the $10 task category. Meanwhile, filming a YouTube video is in the $10,000 category, it

category. Meanwhile, filming a YouTube video is in the $10,000 category, it becomes clearer and clearer by just understanding the difference between all of these. What kind of return on investment of my time, attention, and

of these. What kind of return on investment of my time, attention, and energy each of these activities can get. Another thing to mention here is that some tasks that could be viewed as $10, I actually enjoy or feel like they are important in some way. An example for me is doing my baby's bedtime every night.

This feels like such an important moment to me to show up and be present and connect and build that relationship. So, I do this anyway, even though I could actually get somebody else to do this for $10 because to me as her mom, it

becomes a $10,000 experience and memory and relationship building activity. So,

your own version of $10 versus $10,000 tasks will be different to everybody else's. And the question you might be wondering is, how do you actually figure

else's. And the question you might be wondering is, how do you actually figure out what your own $10 versus $10,000 tasks are and how you should therefore spend your time? And I realized this for myself where I had no idea where my time was actually going. It's easy to feel busy and overwhelmed. And the

fundamental problem is you can't manage what you don't measure. If you don't know where your time is going each week, it's difficult to actually figure out, oh, am I spending my time on things that are sensible or not? So, what I use is

this 168 hours template. In each week, there are 168 hours. This helps me to intentionally allocate how I spend my time each week. I split this into different categories and then I actually also track my time to figure out how

close am I to my ideal intention of how I want to be spending my week. And so

over time once you have your ideal allocation of hours and then you track and figure out what your real allocation of hours is, you can bring these closer and closer together to actually try to align on how you're investing your time and energy. By tracking your time, you might realize that you're actually

and energy. By tracking your time, you might realize that you're actually spending 15 hours on $10 tasks and only 3 hours on $10,000 tasks. And that's

precisely the data that you need to make informed decisions about what to delegate, what to eliminate, and what to protect. This is hands down one of the best things that I've done to intentionally invest my time and energy.

If you want to start implementing this kind of thing, I've included the template completely for free linked down below if you're interested in checking it out so you can try to implement this in your own life. Now, once you know your $10 tasks versus your $10,000 tasks, the next shift is that delegation

isn't indulgence. It's actually leadership. After identifying that

isn't indulgence. It's actually leadership. After identifying that something is a $10 task, there are a couple of questions I ask after this.

The first question is, can I eliminate this? What would happen if I just didn't do it? The second question is, okay, if I can't eliminate it, then can I

do it? The second question is, okay, if I can't eliminate it, then can I delegate this or can I automate this? Basically, taking it off my plate and either giving it to somebody else or automating it so it actually just gets done on autopilot or finally, is this something that actually I need to do?

And so understanding which category a $10 task goes in is very helpful. And we

want to try to move our $10 tasks into either the eliminate or delegate categories. Delegation is a core leadership skill. It protects your

categories. Delegation is a core leadership skill. It protects your focus, your creativity, and is how CEOs scale their impact. As much as productivity and time management can help to an extent to help us to do more

stuff, there is a limit to how much time each of us has. And so if you want to extend and scale beyond the time that you have, then you need to learn how to delegate. There is a whole spectrum of delegation from delegating individual

delegate. There is a whole spectrum of delegation from delegating individual tasks to actually hiring somebody wholesale to take on whole areas of running your own life. One simple way to delegate is identifying specific tasks

that need to be done and outsourcing those. This could include things like cleaning or cooking or doing your hair, that kind of thing. One example from my own life is when I was a student at high school and then at Cambridge Medical School, I actually used to cut my own hair and I made a whole YouTube video

about how I did it. If I must say so myself, I actually got pretty great results after practicing this technique for many years. So, my self haircuts were actually pretty solid. That wasn't actually an issue. The issue here was the mental energy and the focus that it cost to execute on because it was always

a slightly stressful moment because I really wanted to get it right given that it was literally my hair. I would go back and forth with the mirror, craning my neck, and trying to figure out if I'd missed any like choppy bits at the back.

But once I've realized the value of my attention, I've realized that the mental bandwidth is actually better spent on higher leverage areas of my life. things

like learning, thinking or even resting. So instead of doing it myself, I actually decided I made the executive decision to just book to see a professional who I could just trust to do a good job and in the meantime I could listen to a podcast or an audio book, Think or just relax. Another

example here is recently I had to apply to renew my passport. There are a bunch of different forms and I could have spent the time myself to go through all of that, but instead actually I asked my executive assistant to work on that.

This saved me all the time and the mental bandwidth of thinking about this.

And essentially, she just gave me a checklist of all the documents that needed to be prepared, which she couldn't get herself, and then that was sorted. And if you value your time above $25 per hour, I would highly recommend

sorted. And if you value your time above $25 per hour, I would highly recommend getting at least a part-time or virtual assistant. And these are some mindset shifts that can help to break free of holding on to tasks that actually we can really give away to somebody else. Firstly, is building the confidence to

trust your team. Whether your team is your cleaner, your hairdresser, your executive assistant, or the team in your business, it's so important that you lead with trust. And also making sure that you're there to support them if

they're unsure. Additionally, self-awareness and self inquiry can

they're unsure. Additionally, self-awareness and self inquiry can really help. Figuring out, okay, why? Like, what is making me feel like I

really help. Figuring out, okay, why? Like, what is making me feel like I should do this? What is the narrative in my mind? What is the feeling? For

example, for building my own IKEA furniture, I recognized that it was fear of wasting money. I was worried that, oh, I can just build this myself for free, so why would I pay somebody $10 to build this for me? And by acknowledging that, I could be like, oh, wait, hang on, that's slightly faulty thinking

because I would take, let's say, half an hour to build this in that half hour, could I generate more than $10 of value, or is buying half an hour of my life back worth $10? Absolutely yes. And so while this fear of wasting money is

something that I have grown up with and built into myself, by pulling back the cover on that, I can decide to act differently and recognize that that feeling is coming from a place of trying to protect me, but now is actually maladaptive. And speaking of delegation, if like me, any of your work involves

maladaptive. And speaking of delegation, if like me, any of your work involves formatting and making things look presentable. Let's talk about one task that you can really delegate right now, which is formatting and making things look beautiful. Whether you're planning for the quarter ahead or organizing a

look beautiful. Whether you're planning for the quarter ahead or organizing a project, preparing a presentation, how much time do you actually spend just trying to make things look cute and look good? Things like adjusting fonts, aligning text boxes, choosing colors, making sure everything's consistent

across the slides. For me, these are often classic $10 tasks, but they often take up the space where I could have been doing more strategic thinking or bigger picture stuff. And this is where Gamma comes in, who are very kindly sponsoring today's video. Here's how I use Gamma and what makes it so helpful.

It can handle the formatting and the visual organization of everything for you so that you can focus on your thinking. You simply start with your ideas and decide roughly what you want to say and roughly how you want to structure it. And then literally at the click of a button, Gamma can transform

structure it. And then literally at the click of a button, Gamma can transform it into a beautifully designed, professionally formatted presentation according to your exact chosen style guidelines. I'm talking aesthetically pleasing layouts, cohesive color schemes, proper visual hierarchy, all

the design elements that would normally take hours to get right with like a tiny little micro adjustments. I've also noticed that Gamma doesn't just make things look pretty because they have this new agent function which can help you to organize and present information even more effectively. For example, if

you want to visualize data, you can insert charts directly into your presentation without having to switch between multiple tools or generate the graph elsewhere. And if you need to summarize a complex or long section or

graph elsewhere. And if you need to summarize a complex or long section or make it more concise, Gamma can help you to create those concise summaries so your key points can land clearly and translate well. In Gamma, you can edit everything and still customize it exactly to your preferences. And if you

want, you can drag and drop and make micro tweaks. But the difference is that you're starting from something polished and well structured instead of a blank slide deck. So if you want to try out Gamma for yourself, I've put a link down

slide deck. So if you want to try out Gamma for yourself, I've put a link down in the description below. Now let's talk about the next shift which is running your life like a seauite with clear departments. Because once you understand delegation, you need to understand what you're actually delegating across.

Here's the key shift. Instead of being one overwhelmed person with a million different tasks, you're actually a CEO with multiple departments. For for me, every single week and month in my bullet journal, I do a dump across six different categories of different hats that I wear. So for me, these are my

different six hats. Firstly is director and creator of my personal brand which involves filming these videos, deciding on the direction of my brand and creating the content around that. So that's includes my newsletter and my Instagram, my YouTube. Secondly is co-founder of the lifestyle business

academy where I work on the curriculum and figuring out where any bottlenecks are and trying to fix those. Thirdly, co-founder of Sparkle Studios which is our personal development app studio. We have multiple different app projects that we're working on. And for each one, I have a slightly different input.

Whether that's a vision or figuring out the growth side or the execution and then on the personal life side, what I like to call the CEO of household and finances, which is a maybe slightly grandiose term, but I think that often household work and tasks is so undervalued. And what this essentially

involves is figuring out, okay, what needs to go on in the household? What is

the strategy and vision here? And how do we get from A to B? and what kind of people do I need to hire in terms of executive assistants or cleaners or housekeepers. And the next one links into this, which is the director of our

housekeepers. And the next one links into this, which is the director of our baby project. We have a six-month old baby, and if you have a kid, you will

baby project. We have a six-month old baby, and if you have a kid, you will totally understand that there's always so much stuff to figure out, whether that's what they're eating, weaning, development, education, how well they're growing, figuring out their like health appointments and vaccinations. There's a

lot of stuff to figure out here. And so, this is another area. And finally,

director of my own personal growth. And this includes health, relationships, and also generally personal development. By separating out all of these six areas and then brain dumping, okay, what is the goal for each of these? Because they

all have a different goal. And what are the tasks that go under each of these?

The chaos stops kind of blending together and feeling overwhelming.

Because before I separated all of these out, I just felt like, oh my god, I have this one massive list and it's all amorphous and there's so many different goals, so many different directions I'm being pulled in. But now with separating these out into key departments of my life, I can essentially decide, okay,

I'm currently wearing my director of the baby project hat. So I just focus on what is the goal for the baby project right now. What is the bottleneck right now? And I can just focus purely on working on that without worrying about

now? And I can just focus purely on working on that without worrying about all these other hats that are also floating around in the background. The

next shift is realizing that overwhelm comes from trying to control what isn't actually yours. Overwhelm is actually about trying to control things that you

actually yours. Overwhelm is actually about trying to control things that you cannot control. If a CEO is clinging to every single detail and micromanaging

cannot control. If a CEO is clinging to every single detail and micromanaging everything and trying to control everything, they will collapse and they will not be able to do that. There's this interesting balance between feeling like you have high agency and the ability to influence and control things

in your life and business and then also accepting that actually a lot of things are somewhat beyond control. We have influence but not control. And the

importance here is clarity on knowing what is actually yours to lead and what is not. and also recognizing which fires can keep burning in the background

is not. and also recognizing which fires can keep burning in the background without causing a massive issue. Adult life is so busy and I sometimes miss the days when I was a kid and had so much less to do. So whenever I notice that a

feeling of overwhelm is creeping into my life, I like to ask myself this, is this actually mind control? Do I actually have control over this? If no, then can I just let go of this feeling? And if yes, then can I take some steps to get it under control? And the second question is, is this an urgent fire that

will expand exponentially if I don't address it and put it out right now? If

not, can this wait till next week? And I just pencil it in in my bullet journal or in my calendar to worry about next week instead. So rather than trying to control everything right here, right now it's figuring out, okay, do I actually have control? Can I let go? And leave this to peacefully go undone for a

have control? Can I let go? And leave this to peacefully go undone for a little bit longer. And so actually just give yourself that permission to not feel overwhelmed or not feel like you're out of control because actually this is exactly how things are meant to be. The next shift is actually setting the

vision for where you're going. The job of a CEO involves setting the overall vision for the company along with the strategy and the system that will actually get them there. At least every quarter, a CEO will sit down and think, okay, what is the overall vision for where we're going and what are the goals

that we want to support this? And then figure out a strategy and a system to actually get there. This ties into all the classic goal setting stuff and I've made a whole video on goal setting which I will link somewhere over here. The

next shift is that your power comes from your decisions. The quality of your decisions determines the quality of your life. CEOs aren't paid for tasks.

They're paid for judgment. This means making difficult big decisions well and decisively. Your life is shaped by the decisions that you make repeatedly. This

decisively. Your life is shaped by the decisions that you make repeatedly. This

includes your health, relationships, boundaries habits environment creativity, hobbies, career. And so here are some of my favorite ways to think about decision-making. The first one is reversibility. Most decisions are not

about decision-making. The first one is reversibility. Most decisions are not actually one-way doors. You can usually walk back through them with a little bit of time investment. Another thing to realize is that great leaders almost

never have perfect clarity. Barack Obama said that he almost never had 100% certainty on any of these major decisions that he had to make as president. And so he said that if he was 51% sure of the decision, he would make

president. And so he said that if he was 51% sure of the decision, he would make the call and move on. This came from the recognition that often there is no perfect decision and if he were to wait for 100% certainty, almost nothing would

get done. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, also echoed this with his 70%

get done. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, also echoed this with his 70% rule. He said that most decisions should actually be made once we have 70% of the

rule. He said that most decisions should actually be made once we have 70% of the information that we wish we had. If we wait for 90% or 100% of the information that we wish we had, we will be making decisions too slowly. So CEO level

decision-making and quality decision-m also means making decisions with partial information and then being open to course correct quickly. And another

framework is knowing the difference between a $10 decision and a $10,000 decision. Similar to tasks, you can apply this to decisions. If a decision

decision. Similar to tasks, you can apply this to decisions. If a decision is essentially a $10 decision, how long of your time is that worth? For me, it's probably worth maybe about a minute or less. On the flip side, a $10,000

decision is worth much more of an investment of attention. And I often find myself in this trap when, let's say, online shopping comparing to find the best deal which might save a couple of dollars when actually this is a less than $10 decision. I can just make this the decision and move on and save myself

that time and attention. The next shift is investing in your most valuable asset. CEOs are responsible for figuring out maintaining long-term value in their

asset. CEOs are responsible for figuring out maintaining long-term value in their company and investing in the most valuable assets that have the largest impact on how the company will grow. And so if you had an asset that had the

power to literally 10x your success and happiness in life, would you invest in it? And you'd probably say, "Well, of course." And you actually do have that

it? And you'd probably say, "Well, of course." And you actually do have that asset, and it's actually yourself. You are your most valuable asset. Everything

that you do comes from yourself. It comes from your mind, your decisions, your health, your body. And so investment in yourself is never wasted.

Hopefully this whole video has shown you how valuable you are. Pouring into your own cup, learning skills, and upgrading your mindset is always ROI positive.

Even if you can't see exactly how it's going to return on that investment, it almost always does. This includes things like knowledge and skills such as books, courses, podcasts, audio books. So if you see an opportunity to invest in

yourself, then absolutely take it. Every single month, I set aside a budget to invest in myself. And so to step into being the CEO of your own life, actually treating yourself like a CEO, CEOs invest so much into coaches, into

mindset, into strategy, into courses, into masterminds, all to level up themselves because they know that they will be the ceiling of success of their own company. And in the same way, each of us and our mindset, our skills, our

own company. And in the same way, each of us and our mindset, our skills, our knowledge will be the ceiling of our own lives. And so the best way to raise that is investing in yourself. The most important thing with watching videos like this is actually taking action on them. So, right here, right now, before

you click off this video, decide on two action points you're taking from this video and write them down, send them to a friend, leave them in the comments, anything, and actually commit to making it happen to actually make a change in your life and start executing. Also, if you'd like to see even more updates from me around personal development, entrepreneurship, and business, and

motherhood, then you might like to follow me over on Instagram, Izzy, where I share more about all of those things. If you enjoyed this video, I think you might like this one over here where I talk about eight habits to level up your life, drawing from habits that I've seen in incredibly high performing people.

Thank you so much for watching. Take care of yourself and remember that the journey is the destination. I'll see you in the next video. Bye.