Maintain - Stefan’s Week-notes 14/06/
Inspired by the weeknotes of friends and coachees including John Fitzgerald, Steve Messer and Nour Sidawi - I thought I'd give it a go.
Inspired by the weeknotes of friends and coachees including John Fitzgerald, Steve Messer and Nour Sidawi - I thought I'd give it a go.
Week of 09–14 June 2025
A week of questioning, returning, and moving from intention to maintenance. A slower beat underneath a full week. The kind that asks not just where you’re going, but who you are becoming as you walk.
1. What’s Calling Me and What’s My Next Hill?
What really mattered this week was a conversation with a coachee—someone highly respected, carrying years of weight across both personal and professional terrains. They’ve done the work. They’ve held firm. But now, they’re standing at a threshold.
And I noticed something: that quote I sometimes use—about knowing what you’re moving toward—felt off this time.
They didn’t need a clear end state. They needed freedom. To move toward something—even an intermediate stop—that felt like theirs.
So we reframed the question. For them. For me:
What’s calling you? What’s your next hill?
Not the summit. Just the next rise to walk toward, to look out from.
2. What Brought Me Alive This Week?
A few days with visitors, full of real talk—about life, plans, what might be next.
And a moment outside of coaching, with a coachee who knows me well, who asked:
“If you don’t go after that bigger pin, will you feel like you sold yourself short?”
The answer came quickly.
Yes.
It wasn’t coaching. It wasn’t structured. It was just… honest.
And it lit something up in me.
So did time with friends and my children—grounding, reminding, warming.
3. The Chat I Can’t Stop Thinking About
A coachee prepping for a panel interview—rigorous, stretching, high-stakes.
Halfway through, the wheels came off. Anger surfaced—not at me, but at themselves.
And that’s when the work began.
We didn’t try to suppress it.
We asked:
What is this anger telling us?
How can we channel it, not be consumed by it?
How do we bring your best self—not the one they expect, but the one that’s already there?
The power wasn’t in the strategy. It was in the wrestle. In the courage to be real.
4. What Shifted for Me
I’ve got—if I’m lucky—30 or 40 years left.
I want them to be full. Not just long, but light-bringing.
On my 49th birthday, I’ll make a declaration.
On my 50th, something more public.
And then—another 50 years of practice.
But this week, I also saw what hasn’t shifted enough.
How the world still fails good people.
How ‘good’ often gets lost in the noise.
We need to flip that. Now.
5. What I’m Wrestling With
More success. More workload.
And less riding.
It’s not guilt—it’s calibration.
Last year: the year of the bike.
The year before: divorce.
This year: foundations.
Building the business. Building a home.
You can’t carry every front equally.
So I’ve set the bar where it needs to be: hold fitness, ride when I can, don’t obsess.
If more happens—great.
But this year is about building strong from underneath.
6. What Do I See?
Trump. Iran. Gaza.
Not enough great leadership.
Even the ‘good’ ones seem more polite than purposeful.
Too much performance. Not enough accountability.
It’s a surface story. And underneath it?
My own next decade is being shaped by that edge.
By the ache for something deeper. Truer. Realer.
That’s where my work lives now.
7. Look at This
Graffiti in Ventnor.
Some hate it.
But to me—it’s rage, alive. Like listening to Rage Against the Machine.
It’s the tension between expression and intrusion.
Between property and voice.
Between silence and shout.
And maybe we need less rage against the machine…
And more rage from it.
Not war. But deep-felt urgency.
If the system itself could feel—what would it do differently?
8. The Word I’m Carrying
Maintain.
It’s not glamorous. But it’s everything.
The best coachees aren’t just the ones with ideas.
They’re the ones who sustain the change.
Who build rhythm, review progress, make it stick.
The same’s true of policy. Of government. Of the SDGs.
Not just flair. Follow-through.
Reflection. Application. Recommitment.
Maintenance is the new movement.
9. The Question I’m Wrestling With
How do I best help the world?
Not from ego. Not from grandeur.
But because I know I can do this work—and that it matters.
So I’m asking:
What’s the one change?
Who do I do it with?
Who am I when I do?
And I’m listening—to the nudges. To the support.
I hear you willing me on.
I’m willing you on too.
10. What I’m Grateful For
For the space to think.
For coachees who challenge, not just reflect.
For friends who ask sharp questions—not as tests, but as gifts.
I’m grateful for moments where the conversation goes both ways—where the person I’m coaching brings their own questions and care.
Not as a tool. As a truth.
That’s not a technique. That’s love, disguised as curiosity.
11. Where I’m Rooted
Still, always—the island.
It holds me in a rhythm that calms and sharpens.
It lets me move, and come back.
It reminds me:
You don’t need to rush to have impact.
You just need to arrive whole. And like the sea we need to ebb and flow.
12. What I’m Reading
I’m reading the words I wrote for my dad.
First Father’s Day without him.
My siblings and I decided we’d write him a card. What we would’ve said.
I read mine yesterday. My brother shared his too.
And in that space—grief softened into connection.
Love, as ever, remains important and better when unboxed, and real.
Happy Father’s Day—to all who carry, support, nurture, and hold.
Closing Thought
This wasn’t a week of fireworks.
But it was a week of fires burning steady.
The kind that says:
“I’ve wrestled with this for a long time. Now I see a way I can change the story.”
And I will.
Not all at once.
But enough to move us forward.
Let’s go.
And Remember; a thriving planet is worth it and we all need you.
Enjoyed reading this? Consider doing one of these:
Get in touch - If any of this topic resonated with you and you have something you’d like to share with me or if you’d like to discuss working with me on this topic - stefan@stefanpowell.co.uk works really well for me.
Book an inquisitive session with me to find out more about what I do and how I do it or run a challenge or thought you have passed me.
Connect with me on linked in and read my long form posts on the rotating topics of Work, Rest. Play, Sustenance and Love every Thursday
Sign up to my newsletter ‘Be The Waves” here - which collates each weeks long form post on a monthly basis and you’ll get to read it later in the month
Follow me on strava.
For now; thank you
I am…
An executive coach who specialises in helping good people lead great things.
Good people care about others, our planet and beauty. Great things are changes for the betterment of society and all that lives within an around it.
It sounds big and fun - it is.
I'm also an endurance racing cyclist and a go. getter.
You can read more about me and what I do; how I work here