Carolyn Ellis - Brilliance Mastery

Carolyn Ellis - Brilliance Mastery Facilitator
Coach
Author of "Lead Conversations that Count: How Busy Managers Run Great Meetings"

AI can be polite. It can be efficient. It can even feel easier some days than the messy, harder work of connecting with ...
08/20/2026

AI can be polite. It can be efficient. It can even feel easier some days than the messy, harder work of connecting with the people around us.

But it can't replace what real connection between human beings gives us: purpose, meaning, and the kind of trust that only builds one honest exchange at a time.

Summer time was cottage season for my lucky sister and me. Here's an early picture of a successful fishing trip on the l...
08/15/2026

Summer time was cottage season for my lucky sister and me. Here's an early picture of a successful fishing trip on the lake under my dad's tutelage, and yes, we got caught in a downpour on the way back.

Dad was a professor of environmental studies, and in the 1970s he was doing research and consulting work on tourism and recreation. He explained to me once that technology was advancing so quickly it had the potential to cut the work week by around 25%. His whole field was worried we wouldn't have enough parks, public spaces and infrastructure for everyone to enjoy their windfall of free time.

The technology arrived exactly as promised. The promise of free time never did.

I look around my neighbourhood now and I see people pushing a stroller with one hand and texting with the other.

I don't think we're short of time so much as short of the ability to put anything down. That's the harder problem. In so many conversations I'm having lately as people come back from summer vacation, they're wondering why they don't feel refreshed or relaxed, but weighed down as soon as they get back to work.

Have you had that feeling before too?

Two thousand years later, we still haven't fully absorbed this. We treat rest like an indulgence instead of the thing th...
08/13/2026

Two thousand years later, we still haven't fully absorbed this. We treat rest like an indulgence instead of the thing that makes the next season of work possible.

A field that's never left fallow eventually stops producing, no matter how much you push it. People work the same way.

What would it look like to treat your own recovery as part of the yield, not a break from it?

There's a particular kind of tired that a vacation doesn't touch. You come home, and within a few days it's as though yo...
08/11/2026

There's a particular kind of tired that a vacation doesn't touch. You come home, and within a few days it's as though you never went.

The instinct is to blame the trip. Too short, badly timed, or we'll just have to do it properly next year.

What the recovery research says is harder and more useful than that. The pressure that creates your need to recover is the same pressure that stops the recovering from working. This means the thing worth changing isn't just the itinerary.

Three simple recovery shifts in the swipe.

Well, turns out it’s sourdough Saturday around here! Just in time for family brunch tomorrow. My first time trying a few...
08/08/2026

Well, turns out it’s sourdough Saturday around here! Just in time for family brunch tomorrow. My first time trying a few things, like the bagels. Wish me luck! 🤓

We're taught to chase certainty. But some of the best ideas only show up when we stop trying to eliminate the unknown an...
08/06/2026

We're taught to chase certainty. But some of the best ideas only show up when we stop trying to eliminate the unknown and start working with it.

Where could a little uncertainty be your opening?

08/04/2026

We're taught to move fast and find the answer. But real leadership often means staying in the not-knowing a little longer.

That's what a creative practice builds: the ability to sit with uncertainty without rushing to fix it.

Where do you make space for that? 👇

I used to wear being busy like a badge of honor. Meeting after meeting, inbox always open. If I was busy, I was doing so...
07/30/2026

I used to wear being busy like a badge of honor. Meeting after meeting, inbox always open. If I was busy, I was doing something right. Or so I told myself.

Then one day I sat down to actually think about a decision that mattered, and realized I couldn't. My mind was still racing from three hours earlier. I'd been "productive" all day and had nothing clear to show for it.

Busy and effective were never the same thing. I just hadn't noticed the difference yet.

Your attention is the most valuable thing you bring to a room. And most days, you don't even notice when it's gone.It sl...
07/28/2026

Your attention is the most valuable thing you bring to a room. And most days, you don't even notice when it's gone.

It slips away quietly, pulled into the inbox, the next meeting, the thing that just went wrong. You're still there, still talking, still "on." But the clearest, most present part of you checked out a while ago.

Reclaiming it isn't complicated. It just takes a few deliberate moves, on repeat, until they become instinct.

Save this for the next time you notice you're present in the room but not really there.

The most exhausting kind of competence: everything on the list gets handled, and next month the list is exactly the same...
07/23/2026

The most exhausting kind of competence: everything on the list gets handled, and next month the list is exactly the same.

The question worth asking is what keeps growing it.

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