Most leaders don’t fail because they lack clarity. They fail because their life is not built to support who they are trying to become.
In this final episode of the Design Yourself series, I focus on the piece most leaders overlook when trying to change their leadership or their life: structure. You can have deep self-awareness and a clear leadership identity, but if your calendar, systems, and environment are misaligned, old patterns will resurface under pressure.
2026 will not test your intentions. It will test your structure.
Why Willpower Breaks Down Under Pressure
Many leaders rely on discipline and motivation to create change. The problem is that leadership rarely happens under ideal conditions. Stress, uncertainty, emotional load, and constant disruption are part of the job.
Research from Stanford University shows that environmental and structural cues drive nearly 45 percent of daily behavior, far more than conscious intention. Under pressure, leaders don’t revert to goals. They revert to structure.
Your leadership is perfectly designed for the results you are currently getting.
The Invisible Leadership Load
Decision overload, emotional labor, unresolved tension, and constant context switching create an invisible leadership load that pushes leaders back into urgency and control.
The problem is not the leader. It is the load.
Architecting your 2026 means identifying what you are carrying that you were never meant to hold alone and redesigning your life so leadership does not require constant force.
The Three Areas That Matter Most
This episode focuses on three essential design domains.
Energy design
How your day drains or restores you matters more than productivity. Leaders must protect recovery, thinking time, and white space in order to lead effectively.
Decision design
Reducing decision fatigue requires clear ownership, strong filters tied to values and strategy, and pushing decisions down instead of pulling everything up.
Relationship design
Leadership is relational. Access boundaries, feedback flow, and proximity shape how you lead and how others experience you.
Your Calendar Tells the Truth
Your calendar is not a scheduling tool. It is a leadership tool.
If your calendar does not reflect your priorities, neither will your leadership. If it doesn’t change in 2026, neither will your results.
Key Takeaways
• Willpower fades, structure holds
• Stress reveals the quality of your design
• Energy, decisions, and relationships must be intentional
• One structural shift can change everything
Mic Drop Moments
• You don’t need more discipline. You need better design.
• Stress doesn’t test your intentions. It exposes your structure.
• Build the structure, and the behavior will follow.
This episode completes the Design Yourself series by showing how to build a life and leadership that actually support who you are becoming.
Listen or watch the full episode of Reflect Forward on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube.
Connect with Kerry
Visit my website, kerrysiggins.com, to explore my book, The Ownership Mindset, and get more leadership resources. Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok!
Find Reflect Forward on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@kerrysiggins-reflectforward
Find out more about my book here: https://kerrysiggins.com/the-ownership-mindset/
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins/
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Most leaders don’t fail because they lack clarity. They fail because their life is not built to support who they are trying to become.
In this final episode of the Design Yourself series, I focus on the piece most leaders overlook when trying to change their leadership or their life: structure. You can have deep self-awareness and a clear leadership identity, but if your calendar, systems, and environment are misaligned, old patterns will resurface under pressure.
2026 will not test your intentions. It will test your structure.
Why Willpower Breaks Down Under Pressure
Many leaders rely on discipline and motivation to create change. The problem is that leadership rarely happens under ideal conditions. Stress, uncertainty, emotional load, and constant disruption are part of the job.
Research from Stanford University shows that environmental and structural cues drive nearly 45 percent of daily behavior, far more than conscious intention. Under pressure, leaders don’t revert to goals. They revert to structure.
Your leadership is perfectly designed for the results you are currently getting.
The Invisible Leadership Load
Decision overload, emotional labor, unresolved tension, and constant context switching create an invisible leadership load that pushes leaders back into urgency and control.
The problem is not the leader. It is the load.
Architecting your 2026 means identifying what you are carrying that you were never meant to hold alone and redesigning your life so leadership does not require constant force.
The Three Areas That Matter Most
This episode focuses on three essential design domains.
Energy design
How your day drains or restores you matters more than productivity. Leaders must protect recovery, thinking time, and white space in order to lead effectively.
Decision design
Reducing decision fatigue requires clear ownership, strong filters tied to values and strategy, and pushing decisions down instead of pulling everything up.
Relationship design
Leadership is relational. Access boundaries, feedback flow, and proximity shape how you lead and how others experience you.
Your Calendar Tells the Truth
Your calendar is not a scheduling tool. It is a leadership tool.
If your calendar does not reflect your priorities, neither will your leadership. If it doesn’t change in 2026, neither will your results.
Key Takeaways
• Willpower fades, structure holds
• Stress reveals the quality of your design
• Energy, decisions, and relationships must be intentional
• One structural shift can change everything
Mic Drop Moments
• You don’t need more discipline. You need better design.
• Stress doesn’t test your intentions. It exposes your structure.
• Build the structure, and the behavior will follow.
This episode completes the Design Yourself series by showing how to build a life and leadership that actually support who you are becoming.
Listen or watch the full episode of Reflect Forward on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube.
Connect with Kerry
Visit my website, kerrysiggins.com, to explore my book, The Ownership Mindset, and get more leadership resources. Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok!
Find Reflect Forward on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@kerrysiggins-reflectforward
Find out more about my book here: https://kerrysiggins.com/the-ownership-mindset/
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins/
Rewrite Your Inner Playlist with Susan Drumm and discover how music and mindset can break old patterns and elevate your leadership.
Summary
If you are ready to rewrite your inner playlist, here is the truth: if you are running an inner track of “I am not enough,” life will keep handing you proof that you are not enough. Until you change the track, nothing changes.
In this episode of Reflect Forward, I sit down with Susan Drumm, CEO advisor, speaker, and author, to explore how our unconscious patterns drive our leadership and lives and how we can disrupt them using something as simple and profound as music.
Meet Susan Drumm
Susan is the bestselling author of The Leaders Playlist and founder of Meritage Leadership. She has spent more than twenty years helping leaders identify the emotional patterns holding them back and replacing them with more empowering ones. She combines neuroscience, the Enneagram, and music to help leaders create new neural pathways and transition into more conscious leadership.
Why Patterns Run the Show
Susan explains that our patterns are not just habits. They are deeply grooved neural highways formed over time, often beginning in childhood. These patterns once protected us, but now they can keep us stuck, repeating the same behaviors even when we know they no longer serve us.
The Enneagram becomes a powerful tool here because it focuses on why we do what we do. When leaders understand their underlying motivation, they stop reading everyone else through their own filter and start leading with clarity, empathy, and purpose.
I share openly about my Type Three pattern of wanting to keep everyone comfortable and how this showed up in my marriage, my divorce, and my leadership. Awareness truly is the first act of liberation.
Music as a Leadership Transformation Tool
Susan’s core method centers on the idea that music accelerates neuroplasticity, making it easier to break old emotional loops and build new ones.
The process is simple and powerful:
1. Name your old playlist (e.g., “I am unworthy”).
2. Choose a pattern interrupt song that captures that old story.
3. Create a new playlist based on an “I am” statement you want to embody.
4. Practice being in that emotional state through movement and repetition.
She shares a story of a high-achieving leader whose identity was completely tied to work. Through playlist work, he reclaimed his sense of freedom and took a six-week vacation for the first time. His company performed better without him micromanaging.
Why This Matters for Leaders
This conversation is for anyone who feels stuck in familiar loops, triggered by the same dynamics, or ready to take full ownership of their inner world.
When you change your internal playlist, you change your leadership. You change your relationships. You change your life.
Key Takeaways
• Your inner playlist shapes your external reality.
• Patterns are neural pathways—once protective, now restrictive.
• The Enneagram helps you understand motivation, not just behavior.
• Music accelerates real emotional and leadership transformation.
• Owning your triggers is an act of power, not blame.
Mic Drop Moments
1. “If you are running a playlist of ‘I am not enough,’ life will keep giving you evidence of that.”
2. “You built the cage—and you are holding the key.”
3. “You are not your title or success. You are your joy, impact, and freedom.
Connect with Kerry
Visit my website, kerrysiggins.com, to explore my book, The Ownership Mindset, and get more leadership resources. Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok!
Find Reflect Forward on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@kerrysiggins-reflectforward
Find out more about my book here: https://kerrysiggins.com/the-ownership-mindset/
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins/
Reflect Forward
Most leaders don’t fail because they lack clarity. They fail because their life is not built to support who they are trying to become.
In this final episode of the Design Yourself series, I focus on the piece most leaders overlook when trying to change their leadership or their life: structure. You can have deep self-awareness and a clear leadership identity, but if your calendar, systems, and environment are misaligned, old patterns will resurface under pressure.
2026 will not test your intentions. It will test your structure.
Why Willpower Breaks Down Under Pressure
Many leaders rely on discipline and motivation to create change. The problem is that leadership rarely happens under ideal conditions. Stress, uncertainty, emotional load, and constant disruption are part of the job.
Research from Stanford University shows that environmental and structural cues drive nearly 45 percent of daily behavior, far more than conscious intention. Under pressure, leaders don’t revert to goals. They revert to structure.
Your leadership is perfectly designed for the results you are currently getting.
The Invisible Leadership Load
Decision overload, emotional labor, unresolved tension, and constant context switching create an invisible leadership load that pushes leaders back into urgency and control.
The problem is not the leader. It is the load.
Architecting your 2026 means identifying what you are carrying that you were never meant to hold alone and redesigning your life so leadership does not require constant force.
The Three Areas That Matter Most
This episode focuses on three essential design domains.
Energy design
How your day drains or restores you matters more than productivity. Leaders must protect recovery, thinking time, and white space in order to lead effectively.
Decision design
Reducing decision fatigue requires clear ownership, strong filters tied to values and strategy, and pushing decisions down instead of pulling everything up.
Relationship design
Leadership is relational. Access boundaries, feedback flow, and proximity shape how you lead and how others experience you.
Your Calendar Tells the Truth
Your calendar is not a scheduling tool. It is a leadership tool.
If your calendar does not reflect your priorities, neither will your leadership. If it doesn’t change in 2026, neither will your results.
Key Takeaways
• Willpower fades, structure holds
• Stress reveals the quality of your design
• Energy, decisions, and relationships must be intentional
• One structural shift can change everything
Mic Drop Moments
• You don’t need more discipline. You need better design.
• Stress doesn’t test your intentions. It exposes your structure.
• Build the structure, and the behavior will follow.
This episode completes the Design Yourself series by showing how to build a life and leadership that actually support who you are becoming.
Listen or watch the full episode of Reflect Forward on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube.
Connect with Kerry
Visit my website, kerrysiggins.com, to explore my book, The Ownership Mindset, and get more leadership resources. Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok!
Find Reflect Forward on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@kerrysiggins-reflectforward
Find out more about my book here: https://kerrysiggins.com/the-ownership-mindset/
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins/