436 - From life's most challenging decisions come the most profound lessons
Some of the most meaningful leadership lessons don’t come from boardrooms. They come from personal crossroads. Learn how one difficult decision sparked a purpose-driven business and a legacy that matters.
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From Life’s Hardest Choices Come the Most Powerful Lessons
Leadership isn’t always about strategy.
Sometimes it’s about humanity.
And often, the hardest and most uncomfortable decisions teach us the most about who we are and why we lead.
In this deeply personal episode, I share a moment that changed my life forever: the decision to leave a stable life and a corporate career and move countries because of something far more important than business.
This isn’t just a story. It’s a framework for what happens when we lead with heart, not ego.
1. Decisions Define Identity
Your values show up in what you choose. When faced with uncertainty, do you choose what’s safe or true? Real leaders know when it’s time to walk away from “security” and move toward purpose.
2. Time Is the Only Thing You Can’t Earn Back
The decision to relocate and be fully present with family wasn’t easy. But it created memories and meaning that would’ve been lost forever. Leadership is knowing what really matters in the long run.
3. Stories Are How We Learn
Stories connect people. They teach without preaching. Watching a loved one near the end of life reminded me that we don’t just remember data. We remember moments. Great leaders tell stories because that’s how legacies live on.
4. Purpose Comes From Pain
Out of that experience came the vision for a business, not just one that earns, but one that teaches. Storytelling became the foundation. Helping others use their voice became the mission.
Final Thought:
If You’re Not Living Intentionally, You’re Just Waiting
We talk about impact, legacy, and freedom.
But those things don’t appear.
They’re built choice by choice, story by story.
This episode reminds us that your next big decision could shape your leadership, relationships, and future.
Tune in to The Daily Hint and ask yourself, how will you spend your time today and tomorrow?
Highlights:
00:00 A Day in 2021: The Phone Call That Changed Everything
02:05 A Sudden Move: From Denmark to Gutta Law
03:27 Cherishing Final Moments: Time with Dad
04:11 A Last Wish: The North Sea Trip
05:03 Life Lessons: The Power of Stories
06:11 Building a Legacy: Inspired by Dad
07:27 The Importance of Storytelling in Business
08:04 Final Thoughts: Make Every Moment Count
Links:
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Subscribe and Listen to The Daily Hint with Jens Heitland Podcast HERE:
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Transcript:
It's 2021 and my phone is vibrating.
My phone is vibrating all the time, so I'm not reacting. My phone is vibrating again. I'm little and living in Denmark, in Copenhagen, with my then 3-year-old daughter and my wife. We just moved from Sweden a year ago. Sweden and Denmark are connected by a bridge for those who have never been in that area.
So we moved literally across the bridge. The phone is vibrating another time I said maybe I need to check up. And it's the family WhatsApp group. Who of you has a family WhatsApp group? Couple of, then you know how much spam you get when you have a family WhatsApp group. So for me it's, I'm not reacting straight away when there is a family WhatsApp group.
Like today I got roughly 40 WhatsApps in the family WhatsApp group because my sister is traveling and they're showing nice photos from across the world. But this day was different this day. It was a rare WhatsApp from my mom. Your dad is in hospital and my dad hasn't been in hospital before in this way.
He was 65 at that time, 66 at that time. And. She didn't know what happened. He was fall. He fell inside of the bathroom and she needed to call the ambulance to pick him up. Fast forward two weeks later, we moved from Denmark to Gutta Law, which is like the town that nobody knows. It is a small town where I grew up from roughly seven to 30 ish, and we decided to move to my hometown where I grew up because my dad was diagnosed with cancer and because my, my granddad died due to cancer.
I said, that's not going to be long. Because of the experience from my granddad, which I barely remember because I was like 12 when he died. He said, I want my daughter to spend as much as possible time. She was three together with him because they have not lived together. We live far away from Germany because we lived in Sweden or and then in Denmark.
So we moved after two weeks of notice. We said F the rental contract in Denmark, you need to pay a couple of months, obviously like in Germany. And we moved. And from that day on since we moved, I spent every single morning at my parents' house, us most of the time together with my daughter having breakfast with my dad.
Something. If you would've asked me four weeks before, like, why would I do that? We spent a lot of time together because I was knowing there will be an end. This end came after nine months, so we had nine months together where my daughter and I, and of obviously my wife and the rest of the family spent a lot of time together.
One evening my dad said, I want to see the North Sea one last time, and I said, tomorrow morning I will pick you up six o'clock. We drove four and a half hours from the little town to the North Sea and back. We spent there roughly an hour where he was just walking silently looking. At the horizon. He was 67 at that time, and he died six weeks later.
If I would not have taken the decision that evening to say, tomorrow we are going to the North Sea, he would have not seen it. What do I want to say with that story? Our lives are short. Every one of us has the possibility to do everything today and tomorrow, and we are just not conscious of the time that we waste every day using social media, using other things.
This story is a story. That gives me strength because I took a very difficult decision to move, quit a job because I didn't have money at that time. I built my own business. 'cause what are you doing when you, when you're big corporate dude, you will not find a better paying job anymore. You start a business consultancy business, obviously, or coaching, or a combination of it.
So I built a business. And a couple of businesses after that. And now I'm running a business that is inspired by my dad. When my dad lived in Spain a couple of years prior, he was doing radio clips, as I mentioned in the beginning or in the morning. I even don't remember anymore. He was professional speaker because he was pastoral.
So he was speaking every Sunday and he didn't consider himself as a professional speaker. He still did radio clips when they lived in Spain. So he was doing the, the, the weekly radio clip. And one of the fascinating things he did, he was telling stories. There were about three minutes long stories. He talked about his mom and how difficult it is to raise kids in this certain time and how difficult things were.
And the fascinating thing of a story is you learn from a story. You take the thing that you take for yourself. Yes, nobody on the radio did know my grandma and the details of that story, but you learned something from a story that you take from someone else's story. I. So I have built a business where we help people to tell stories.'cause I believe that when we talk about businesses, stories matter. Stories are the things where we learn what we learn from the kids that you have shared from having a dog on stage, which is something I have never experienced. We learn the intricate from each other when we tell stories. And that's what I believe.
We should do more telling stories, doing difficult things, and taking action. So I encourage you, how do you spend your time today and tomorrow so that you change the world? Thank you very much.
