Dominique Stulens

On choosing your own direction, finding your voice and discovering the strength in softness.

For a long time, I let life decide.

I never had a grand plan.

When I was young, no one really asked me what I loved doing.

What I dreamed about.

What kind of life I wanted to create.

So I followed what came.

A year in America.

Marketing.

International companies.

Paris.

Africa.

Leadership.

And I became good at it.

For more than twenty-five years, I built an international career.

I travelled.

Led teams.

Connected people.

But underneath it all was a pattern I would only recognise much later:

I often let circumstances — and other people — decide what came next.

When life decides for you

Paris had once been a dream.

When the opportunity finally came, I took it.

But it wasn't what I had imagined.

A difficult relationship with my manager slowly affected my confidence.

So I left.

Later came another international role.

More responsibility.

Leadership.

A career I loved.

Then life shifted again.

After five years of trying to become pregnant, I became pregnant with twins.

I spent nine months at home.

And just before I was due to return to work, in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis, I lost my job.

Still, I continued.

Until, years later, my body stopped me.

In 2020, I burned out.

At first, even I didn't fully recognise it.

When my doctor told me to stop working for four weeks, my first thought was:

I can't.

Then, on the final day before I was due to return, I lost my job again.

This time, I couldn't simply keep going.

Taking back the direction

Something had to change.

Not only my work.

The way I was living.

I began to recognise something in myself I no longer wanted:

I had given other people too much power over the direction of my life.

Building my own business became part of finding my way back.

Slowly.

Not perfectly.

I surrounded myself with people who challenged my thinking.

People who held up a mirror when the old doubts returned.

And they still return.

I'm not one hundred percent there.

Maybe ninety-five.

There is still a part of me that wonders:

Am I saying the right thing?

Am I doing enough?

Is this really me?

But something fundamental has changed.

I listen to myself now.

When something doesn't feel right, I say it.

When a relationship no longer feels right, I can let it go.

I make my own decisions.

And I accept the responsibility that comes with them.

A different kind of strength

There is another part of myself I'm still discovering.

My softness.

People have been telling me about it for years.

They hear it in my voice.

Clients tell me they feel they can trust me.

Recently, someone I had worked with told me there was so much softness in me — and that perhaps I wasn't showing enough of it.

I didn't quite know what to do with that.

Because I also know myself as someone who acts.

Who moves.

Who says what needs to be said.

Who can be strong.

For a long time, I thought those things were opposites.

I'm beginning to understand that they aren't.

I can confront with softness.

I can lead with empathy.

I can be gentle without becoming small.

Maybe this next chapter isn't about becoming stronger.

Maybe it's about allowing more of what was already there.

There is no age at which it is too late to choose differently.

Today, success means something different to me.

It means making my own choices.

Having freedom over my time.

Taking responsibility for the life I create.

And staying curious about what might still be possible.

There is something I want to pass on, especially to my children.

Not simply that they should keep going.

Something deeper.

Love and softness towards yourself.

Because perhaps that is where everything begins.

From there, you can choose.

Your people.

Your direction.

Your life.

Dominique Stulens
Founder YourNextMe
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