You reached the level you once aimed for. So why does it still feel like you're chasing?

You've grown. You've developed new skills, expanded your perspective, and learned to navigate complexity more effectively than before.

But growth was never the final destination.

Many leaders spend their entire careers striving. Chasing the next target. Solving the next problem. Proving themselves again and again. Even after achieving success, the internal pressure remains.

In this episode of The Forge Conversations, Alain Coadou explores the final movement of the FORGE framework: Excel.

Using the metaphor of the experienced sailor, this episode examines what distinguishes excellence from achievement, and why the highest levels of human performance are often characterised by less struggle rather than more effort.

Drawing on Flow Theory, Self-Determination Theory, Deliberate Practice, and the science of expertise, we explore how mastery emerges when competence, purpose, and identity become aligned.

Topics include:

• Why many successful leaders remain trapped in perpetual striving
• The difference between achievement, expertise, and mastery
• How elite performers sustain excellence without chronic pressure
• The role of flow, autonomy, and intrinsic motivation in long-term performance
• Why mastery often feels calmer than ambition
• How the FORGE journey culminates in a fundamentally different relationship with achievement itself

Because excellence has little to do with pushing harder.

It is about reaching the point where effort and ease can coexist.

Where action becomes more intentional.

Where urgency no longer drives every decision.

Where who you are and what you do become increasingly aligned.

This episode concludes the FORGE framework:

Focus. Overcome. Reinvent. Grow. Excel.

A conversation for leaders, executives, entrepreneurs, and professionals who want to perform at a high level without sacrificing clarity, health, or themselves in the process.

Alain Coadou is an executive coach and the founder of The Forge Partners. He helps international executives build sustainable excellence: performing under pressure without drifting. Author of Beyond the Drift and L'Excellence Durable. theforgepartners.com

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.