The Day My Calendar Went Empty — And Why It Was the Best Thing That Ever happened to me

Two weeks before I got fired, I went to an ashram in the Bahamas.

I told a friend: "I need a vacation where I don't come back more tired than I left." So I went somewhere with no alcohol, no coffee, no agenda. Just meditation and yoga and space.

I came back grounded in a way I hadn't been in years. Four days later I walked into a meeting, saw my boss had flown in from Toronto, looked at the expression on her face — and I knew.

They were restructuring. My role was being eliminated. After 25 years in executive HR, I was the one sitting in the chair I'd put other people in hundreds of times.

My calendar — which had been full for the next twelve months, flights and meetings and presentations and all of it — cleared overnight. And I sat there. Calm.

The Coat I Didn't Know I Was Wearing

I describe it this way: walking out of that meeting felt like leaving a coat at the door.

When you work inside a large organization — especially at the executive level — you stop being fully yourself. You start being the voice of the organization. You wear its brand. You speak its language. You know exactly where you're going to be and what you're going to be doing because the calendar tells you, day after day, month after month, year after year. And then the calendar empties.

And you realize that some of who you thought you were... was the coat.

I had built a 25-year career in HR, legal, banking, Big Four. I had done mergers and acquisitions. I had been the integrator after deals closed. I had sat across from hundreds of people and told them their role was eliminated. I was not unfamiliar with how this worked.But I had never asked myself what I actually wanted. Because the coat kept me warm enough that I never had to.

The Interview I Bombed on Purpose

Three days after the layoff, my network got me into an interview for a VP role at a bank. I had every credential. I had the experience. I had done the job before in different forms. And I sat there and drew a complete blank. I couldn't answer a single question with any intelligence. I walked out of that building knowing I had failed it — and knowing I had done it deliberately, even if not consciously.

Because as I walked home that afternoon, something became very clear: I hated HR. I had hated it for years. But I couldn't admit that to myself — because if I admitted it, I would have had to do something about it.

So I kept going. The incentives were good. The identity was established. The calendar was full. But something in me already knew. And the moment the job was gone, that something had enough quiet to finally be heard.

What I Discovered on the Other Side

I did not go the traditional route to find my next chapter. I got sober nine years ago, and I did that my own way too. Not the traditional path. I built a home-based team: a hypnotherapist, a massage therapist, a personal trainer, acupuncture. I built support around myself. I learned what it meant to take care of the person behind the career.

What I found on the other side of the layoff was my voice. When you work for a large organization in a leadership role, you speak for the organization. You don't have your own voice in the same way. You represent something larger than yourself. And there are trade-offs to that — financial security, opportunity, clear purpose. But what you trade is the ability to show up completely as yourself.

What I do now — hypnocoaching, working with entrepreneurs and executives who feel stuck or burned out or disconnected from the lives they've built — this is mine. Not the way someone else does it. Not the way I studied it. My way. And that's the difference.

What I Do — And Why It Works

Most people hear "hypnotherapy" and picture a stage show. Someone dangling a watch.

Someone barking like a dog.

That is not this.

The hypnosis I work with is the same state you enter naturally every single day: the moment just before you fall asleep, the moment just before you wake up, the drive you completed without remembering how you got there. That's the alpha brain state. It's where children live until they're about six or seven years old. And it's where the most meaningful changes in belief, behavior, and identity actually happen.

In that state, three things become possible:

First: Your inner critic goes quiet. The voice that says you're not good enough, this isn't for you, you're going to fail — it lowers significantly. That lets you access what's actually underneath it.

Second: You gain the ability to step outside your own situation and look at it from a different angle. I use this with entrepreneurs who are stuck in a business problem — you can suddenly see options that were invisible when you were inside the problem.

Third: You can practice, in your mind, what you want to become. And here's the thing — for your brain, it already happened. Your nervous system doesn't know the difference between something you experienced and something you practiced vividly under hypnosis. Which means when you do it in real life, it's already familiar.

I combine this with somatic coaching — working with the body, not just the brain, because the body processes information faster than conscious thought. And I combine it with executive coaching from my 25 years on the other side of the table.

More than half of my clients are men. Most of them come in thinking they have a tactical problem — a performance issue, a communication pattern, a team that won't execute. What they actually have is a belief problem. An internal story that's been running the show long before they started the business.

We find it. We interrupt it. We reprogram toward what they actually want.

Therapy Won't Fix You — And That's Not the Point

One of the most honest things I say to people is this: I am not going to fix you. You are not broken. You are exactly where you are based on what you've been through. The goal isn't to fix something. The goal is to understand what story you're currently living from, and decide whether it's still the one you want.

What happens in our sessions is preparation. You practice. You reprogram. You experience —under hypnosis — the version of yourself you're trying to become. But the transformation itself?

That happens in contact with real life. With your partner. With your team. In the negotiation. In the conversation you've been avoiding for six months. You don't become a great public speaker in my office. You become one on stage, with the audience in front of you — but with the advantage of having already stood in front of 3,000 people in your mind a dozen times before you got there.

The tools are real. The work is yours to do.

The Question That Changes Everything

If someone walks away from this post with only one thing, I want it to be this: Ask yourself what you really care about. Not what you're supposed to care about. Not what makes sense on paper. Not what would impress other people or justify the career you've built or explain to your parents why you took this path.

If nobody on the planet needed to know about it — what would you care about?

And when you have the answer: is your life moving in the direction of that?If yes — keep going, keep building, and go do it harder. If not — it might be time to find the coat you've been wearing and figure out if it still belongs to you.

I Was Recently a Guest on The Kronos Group Podcast

Earlier this year, I had a conversation with Jerry Brazie on The Kronos Group Podcast that went deeper than most. Jerry is a former street kid who built over $450 million in revenue across a dozen companies, lost a hundred pounds in eight months, quit opioids cold turkey, and has been married for 29 years. He does not hold back and he does not let you off the hook.

We talked about identity, hypnotherapy, sobriety, addiction, the comparison trap, and what it really means to transform — in business and in life. 

You can watch the full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eU2ygUwqO8&feature=youtu.be

Or find it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify by searching The Kronos Group Podcast. Ready to Have the Conversation?

If any of this resonates — if you're a high achiever who feels stuck, burned out, disconnected from the life you've built, or like something is off and you can't name what it is — I want to talk with you.

I offer a free 15-minute discovery call. No pitch. No pressure. Just a real conversation to see if what I do is the right fit for where you are.

Book your free call: hypnocoach.ca Email me directly: jt@hypnocoach.ca

You built something real. You deserve to actually enjoy it.

Hypnotically yours, 

Janylène