Order my USA TODAY Bestselling book: toxicgrit.com TOXIC GRIT: How to have it all and (actually) love what you have. It will help you create a new approach to ambition and find space for all the diverse parts of yourself. Join 75K+ others who read my newsletter 🧩 Life's a Game at amandagoetz.com. It’s full of free tips to play the game of life at a whole new level. In 2018 I found myself at the height of my marketing career with 3 kids under the age of 4 and filing for divorce. In a world telling me to find alignment......I realized that was impossible. The work version of me didn't want to leave early to go be with the kiddos. The mom version of me didn't want to miss a moment with them. I wanted to be fiercely independent and yet also wanted to find love again. Other versions of me didn't want to feel responsible for anything or anyone. This diversity within me led to the creation of my Character Theory Framework. This framework helped me to create space for the 10 characters that make up the movie of your life:  The CEO → wants to pursue big goalsThe Partner → desires companionship  The Soloist → cares about personal growth and development The Caregiver → deep desire to take care of others and show up for themThe Goddess → wants to be desired and pursue pleasure  The Lazy One → loves to couch rot, no goals whatsoever The Socialite → values connection The Creative → desires creation and creativity The Doctor → your inner health &amp; wellness character The Explorer → craves novelty And it helped me. I was able to let go of the idea of balance and give permission for hierarchy, boundaries and the transition sequences necessary to embody these diverse characters. So I put it all in a book and it was an instant best seller!! I'm so excited for you to create space for all parts of you and to see ambition as multi-dimensional. Follow me here for advice as I build a multi-hyphenate life as a CMO, Author, Mom of 3 and getting married again. 

Amanda Goetz

I help mid-career professionals stop overthinking and decide on their next career move with clarity & confidence 🤸🏼‍♀️ | Combining strategic actions with mind & body awareness for lasting change | Ready to get unstuck?

Hi there :) I’m Cristina and I'm not your typical "career coach". 

I work with leaders (founders, creators, senior professionals) who look successful on the outside but internally feel disconnected and stuck in survival mode: overthinking, self-criticism and constant pressure.

People usually come to me when:

-- their role no longer fits but clarity feels out of reach

-- they want to play bigger but don’t feel ready or settled enough to go for it

-- they’re tired of living on autopilot and quietly delaying their potential


The work happens on two levels, in parallel.

First: how you relate to yourself.

We work with the internal patterns that drive urgency, overthinking, self-doubt or shutdown so you can stay grounded and clear even when uncertainty is present. This often means shifting out of your head and reconnecting with the wisdom of your body.

Second: how you move in the world.

From that steadier place, we shape direction, language and next steps that actually match who you are, not who you’ve learnt to be to fit in, belong or stay safe.

The goal isn’t to “fix” you or push you into a decision.

It’s to restore enough internal space and trust that the right moves become obvious and that you’re able to operate from a more connected, regulated, grounded state going forward.


How I got into this work 

I spent a decade in consulting (Accenture Song) and startups building what looked like the “right” career.

On the outside: driven, responsible, successful.
On the inside: self-doubt, disconnection and a quiet sense I was overriding myself.

What changed things wasn’t a perfect plan or strategy.

It was doing the inner work (identity, emotional & nervous system) that helped me feel settled in myself so decisions came from clarity, not fear.

That’s now the heart of my work.

Helping people hold the paradox of being enough as they are while still wanting more.

I’ve worked with over 50+ 1:1 clients from founders & creators to leaders in places like Stripe, Skyscanner, Sky, Accenture, Salesforce and Clifford Chance.


If you’re in a “WTF is my career?” season or you’re succeeding but exhausted from operating in constant defence mode.

You don’t need more tabs open or another generic framework.

You need:

-- a steadier, kinder relationship with yourself

-- the courage & capacity to sit with uncertainty without collapsing or forcing

-- a space where your own truth can actually be heard

If that’s what you’re craving, DM me to have a chat :)

Cristina Espinal 🤸‍♀️

This International Women's Day, I want to try something with you 🩷

Think about the women in your life.

Who comes to mind?

Who is a source of support & encouragement? 
Who is a source of inspiration & expansion? 
Who is a source of play & adventure? 
Who is a source of wisdom & perspective? 
Who is a source of safety & familiarity?

For me, a few stand out:

💚 My mum. She raised four kids across three countries, each with different languages and cultures. She’s also the craftiest person I know :) she’s designed and personalised shoes for me, learnt how to knit beautiful stuffed animals and is always learning something new (currently how to draw).

💚 My sister. She's driven, intelligent, caring and generous. She’s built an incredible career that took her from London to Hong Kong to Miami, all while raising three kids.

💚 My incredible friends. Many of whom are balancing motherhood with their careers. Their grace and resilience inspire me daily.

This International Women's Day, take a few minutes to acknowledge the women in your life. Thank them for their presence, no matter how long they've been in it or how close you are.

Some of the women I'm grateful to know and admire on here that you should 1000% be following: 

Alyssa Smith, M.Ed. - parent coach extradionare
Eleni Rizopoulou - communication x physiology x psychology
Bea Trinidad - all things food, comms and storytelling 
Ellie Louisa McGuigan - paid x influencer marketing
Amber Shand MBCS - public speaking and brave on stage Queen!
Roslyn McLarty - building Within and supporting conscious female founders 
Becca Eve Young - author, marketer and coach for conscious entrepreneurs 
Kristin Miller - aka Kristin Mindset Miller 
Elena Shirokaya - combining the world of leadership and nervous system regulation 
Siddhi Mittal - building a startup in public + how to leverage AI
Sara Francis - conscious building + flow state connoisseur

Raise your hand if you have incredible women in your life 🙋‍♀️

Who's coming to mind for you?

At a career crossroads? Get unstuck by reconnecting with your inner clarity, voice and value | Career Coach & Facilitator | Ex Consultant & Startup Operator | Join my Weekly Walks in London ↓

FAQ: “How do you get over the fear of putting yourself out there?”

When I started my business, I struggled with this too.

For the first 6 months, I was posting on LinkedIn three times a week.

But something was still holding me back.

My LinkedIn headline still said “Startup Operator," even though I was working on my coaching business full-time.

That title was a safety net.

A way of saying: I’m doing this… but I can always go back. So even though I was posting, I still had one foot in and one foot out.

Externally, my message felt hesitant.

Internally, I kept second-guessing myself:

Should I really do this?
What if it doesn’t work?

And that constant questioning slowly killed my momentum.

What finally shifted things wasn’t forcing myself to be more confident, it was letting go of the old identity.

I updated my headline and fully committed to the new path.

After that, showing up consistently became much easier.

I went from posting 3x a week to 5x a week and I’ve kept that rhythm for the past 2 years.

Why? because behaviour follows identity.

Who you believe you are shapes what feels natural to do.

I see the same dynamic with people navigating career transitions.

They feel the pull toward something new but part of them is still holding onto the identity that made them successful before.

So instead of asking: How do I get better at putting myself out there?

Try asking: What identity am I still holding onto that makes this feel unsafe? 

🔔 Follow me (Cristina Espinal 🤸‍♀️) if you want to get unstuck in your career and lead a life & career that's aligned and alive.

P.S. Have you ever caught yourself keeping one foot in and one foot out?

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The aimlessness you feel in your career, explained in 105 seconds:

You think the problem is lack of clarity but it's actually what happens right after the moment of clarity.

A thought appears: “I want something different”

And then a second voice quickly follows:

"Maybe I'm wrong"
"Maybe I'm not good enough to find something better"
"Maybe this is just what work feels like"

& what happens is that over time the doubt becomes louder than the signal.

I see this constantly in my coaching work.

I explain the pattern in this short video and what you can do to get unstuck.

🔔 Follow me (Cristina Espinal 🤸‍♀️) if you want to lead a life & career that's aligned and alive, without the constant overwhelm, stress and confusion.

Do you face a storm like a cow or a bison? 👀

Yesterday I attended Dr. Shadé Zahrai's book launch in London for Big Trust, a book about the four components of self-trust and what happens when you strengthen each one.

(I've shared the 4 components in the comments for anyone interested)

What resonated most from her talk was this analogy:

When a storm approaches, cows try to run away from it.

But storms move faster than they do so they end up running with the storm and being exposed to it for longer.

Bisons do the opposite.

They turn and walk directly into the storm which means they pass through it faster.

They face it.

And because of that, they spend less time inside it.

I see this dynamic constantly in career transitions.

When work stops feeling aligned, many people start circling the discomfort:

avoid the difficult conversations
stay busy
overthink
wait for clarity to appear

But the thing that actually rebuilds self-trust is turning toward what's uncomfortable, like a Bison, and actually facing the question. 

This year one of my intentions is to speak in more communities about getting unstuck in your career.

So this is my Bison moment: naming it publicly and doing the outreach.

If you run a community (or are part of one) that would benefit from a conversation about getting unstuck in your career and rebuilding self-trust, I'd love to connect.

And for your Bison moment today, reflect on where might you be running from the storm right now & what it would look like to turn and face it instead?

🔔 Follow me (Cristina Espinal 🤸‍♀️) if you want to lead a life & career that's aligned and alive, without the constant overwhelm, stress and confusion.

P.S. Have you gotten Shadé's book yet?

I ran a workshop yesterday with people across different ages, backgrounds, stages of life. But they all had 1 thing in common:

they were all navigating some kind of transition
they were all dealing with some level of uncertainty

And aren't we all?

If we slowed down and allowed ourselves to be with what's here, we'd notice the truth in that for ourselves.

One of my favourite quotes says:

→ "If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's."

Because the questioning, the dissatisfaction, the uneasiness...is not a sign that anything is wrong, it's a sign that you're no longer on autopilot.

When we slow down, we start to see the behaviours and patterns that are quietly running our lives.

We start to hear what the worry, the overwhelm, the self-criticism is actually trying to tell us.

That's exactly what we made space for yesterday.

Helping people understand the protective and reactive patterns that cause them to relate to their challenges in ways that keep them stuck. And offering a different worldview to lead from, one that helps you meet what's happening in your life with more openness, curiosity and trust.

This takes a lot of courage.

It means being willing to slow down.
To be with discomfort.
To disappoint people.
To face rejection.

To show up in ways that feel uncomfortable before they feel freeing.

But it’s also what allows you to live with more alignment and fulfilment.

And when you’re living in alignment, your state, thoughts, emotions, energy and actions begin to tell the same truth.

You’re embodying your voice, your values, your truth.

And that’s worth being courageous for.

It starts the moment you’re willing to be with what’s there.

Or as someone in the workshop said yesterday:

“to let it be.”

→ When was the last time you attended an in-person workshop? 

I'm going to be doing more so lmk if you want to join the next one :)

🔔  Follow me (Cristina Espinal 🤸‍♀️) if you want to get unstuck in your career and lead a life & career that's aligned and alive.

When was the last time you questioned the scorecard you've been living by?

Most of us build our entire lives around it without ever stopping to ask:

> Am I spending my energy on what I actually want to create and contribute? 

> Is living in this city moving me toward where I want to go? 

> Are the people I surround myself with expanding or shrinking me?

And then something happens that forces the question:

A redundancy, a health scare, a loss. 
A quiet pull you can no longer ignore.

And the scorecard starts to crack.

Most people either: 1) panic and try to fix it with a new plan or 2) freeze and convince themselves something is fundamentally wrong with them.

But there's a third option.
That's what this video is about.

🔔 Follow me (Cristina Espinal 🤸‍♀️) if you want to lead a life & career that's aligned and alive, without the constant pressure, stress and urgency.

One piece of advice from Amelia Sordell that I LOVED (from a female founders panel I attended at LSE):

Someone asked: "I want to start a business but I don't know what it should be about. What would you recommend?"

And Amelia basically said: "Then don't start one."

She explained that a business only survives when you deeply believe in the problem you're solving. Because it will get hard. And when it does, belief in the work is what carries you.

→ Listening to her, I thought: the same is true about our careers.

When you lose connection to the work you're doing, everything becomes heavier.

> Tasks that used to feel simple suddenly feel exhausting
> Showing up starts to feel forced
> You spend enormous energy just getting through the day

Career transitions aren't just strategic decisions.

They're a kind of grief. 

You're letting go of an identity you built, performed and were rewarded for, even when it stopped fitting.

→ And until you allow that ending, you'll mind will continue to postpone the decision and convince you to stay somewhere that quietly drains you.

So before rushing to fix the discomfort, try sitting with it. I promise you that you'll move forward much faster once you actually listen to what you need. 

→ Who else loves attending events?

P.S. Shoutout to the other incredible female panelists <3

FAQ: “Do I need to be more resilient… or am I just in the wrong environment?”

This question usually shows up when something about work feels off but you can't pinpoint what.

So your mind starts arguing with itself. 

Is it the environment?
Is it me?
Should I push harder?
Should I leave?

Both sides of the argument make sense so the thinking just loops.

Here's what's actually going on beneath that loop:

If you've spent years being the responsible one…
the reliable one…
the person who keeps things together…

you probably became very good at pushing past your own discomfort to get things done.

That ability likely helped you succeed.

But it comes with a cost.

Over time you lose the ability to tell the difference between:

→ this situation isn’t right for me

and

→ I just need to handle it better

So every decision becomes a question mark.

→ Stay or go?
→ Push through or change direction?

And the more you analyse it, the harder it gets to trust your own judgement.

Because you've spent so long overriding your own signals that you can no longer hear them clearly.

That’s why more thinking rarely helps. 

→ The way back to trusting yourself isn't more analysis, it's learning to listen differently.

To move beyond your thoughts to what your emotions are telling you.

What the confusion is pointing at.
What the fear or regret underneath it is trying to say.

And when you start listening to all of it, not just the thoughts but what sits underneath them, questions like this tend to answer themselves.

→ Are you decisive or indecisive? 

🔔 Follow me (Cristina Espinal 🤸‍♀️) if you want to lead a life & career that's aligned and alive, without the constant pressure, stress and urgency.

If you lost your job tomorrow, would you have somewhere else to stand?

And by somewhere else, I don't mean somewhere physically.

I mean, is your identity split across different islands you can stand on?

One island is for your 9-5 job. 
One island is for your kids & family. 
One island is for your health & exercise. 
One island is for your creative endeavours. 
One island is for your regeneration & rest. 
One island is for adventure & novelty.

How many islands are you moving between on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?

There's actually research on this. Psychologist Patricia Linville calls it self-complexity.

It shows that people who have multiple integrated identities are significantly more resilient when one of those identities is threatened because they have somewhere else to stand.

When work wobbles, they don't completely collapse because their sense of self isn't housed in one place.

For me, even now as a coach, facilitator and business owner, I am also a daughter, a sister, a wife, a friend. I host weekly walks in central London. I facilitate experiences with other practitioners (like my workshop on Sunday, 15th of March if you're in London #cheekyplug). I write. I run.

None of these identities define me but staying connected to them keeps me connected to myself.

→ So if you're feeling like your entire identity is tied to what you do, what other islands can you build and spend time in?

I'm convinced that the more you allow yourself to be expressed, the more whole you'll feel, regardless of how work is going or what role you're currently in.

Because purpose isn't found in what you do, it's expressed in who you are.

And who you are evolves.

So it becomes your responsibility to know yourself deeply enough, and stay anchored enough in that knowing, that no matter what's happening externally, you trust that you're going to be ok.

→ If you had to count your islands right now, how many do you have?

--

P.S. I'm diving into this topic of identity & work in tomorrow's newsletter if you want to read it, sign up link is in the comments :)

🔔 Follow me (Cristina Espinal 🤸‍♀️) if you want to lead a life & career that's aligned and alive, without the constant pressure, stress and urgency.

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