Bronwen Sciortino spent almost two decades as an award-winning executive. Full calendar, wild inbox, rock-solid reputation. Then, four days after surgeons removed an aggressive skin cancer from her scalp, she looked in the mirror and realised the person frightening her wasn’t only the one she could see.
Today she’s an international author, speaker and simplicity expert, and the woman behind Keep It Super Simple: Tips from a Recovering Perfectionist, The Economy of Enough and Beyond Ah-Ha, plus the keynotes, workshops, leadership and Executive development and online programs that go with them.
Her belief is deceptively simple: You don’t have to throw everything away to change your life.
In this conversation, Bronwen talks about the mirror, the thousands of tiny choices behind it, and the one question she thinks every high achiever should ask before life asks it for them.
You spent almost two decades as an award-winning executive. What happened?
Bronwen Sciortino: Honestly? I didn’t choose it. It chose me.
For almost twenty years I was the person who had it all together. Awards, executive senior roles, a calendar you couldn’t squeeze a coffee into. From the outside it looked like I had everything. From the inside I was running on fumes and calling it commitment.
Then I was diagnosed with an aggressive skin cancer on my scalp. Four days after the surgery, I stood in front of the mirror and saw a monster. A quarter of my head was missing and my face was swollen and distorted, with stitches and staples everywhere.
And here’s the bit that still gives me goosebumps. It wasn’t the scars that stopped me. It was realising the person frightening me wasn’t only the one in the mirror, it was the person I’d become long before the surgery.
It took me years to realise that I hadn’t ended up there through one big decision. Nobody wakes up and decides to burn themselves out and I was no different. My life shattered into a million pieces on the floor around me, and I got there through thousands of tiny choices that never seemed important enough to notice. The ‘yes’ I said without thinking, the lunch I skipped, the thousands of signals from my body I talked myself out of hearing. They all seemed perfectly reasonable in the moment. But cumulatively, they had a devastating affect on my life.
That’s when I asked myself a question that changed everything: what if there’s a better way to live?
Why do you think so many of us wait for something enormous to tell us our life needs to change?
Bronwen Sciortino: Because we’ve been taught that change has to be dramatic. A diagnosis. A breakdown. A bombshell. Surely nothing less would justify stopping, right?
But life is actually built from small, daily choices. I just couldn’t see that while I was busy proving to the world (and myself) that I was good enough.
What I’ve come to learn is that the biggest lie we’re sold is that your worth is something you earn.
Subconsciously, we immerse ourselves in the process of collecting gold stars, chasing approval and climbing up onto a pedestal of performance all the while spending years terrified of falling off it. I know, because I lived up there for decades. I genuinely believed that being busy, reliable and indispensable was the same thing as being valuable. It took losing a chunk of my own head to see how much of my life was organised around proving I was enough.
And then there’s the sentence that makes people squirm: we’re only ever as busy as we choose to be. Say it out loud to a friend over coffee and watch what happens to their face. It’s uncomfortable. It’s also the most freeing sentence I know, because if your life is built from the cumulative effect of tiny choices, then you have the freedom to make different ones.
That’s what I mean by becoming self-sourced: where your sense of worth, and your happiness, don’t depend on anyone else’s approval or on the next achievement.
What was it really like to leave that identity behind?
Bronwen Sciortino: Leaving a career I’d spent almost twenty years building was about far more than walking away from a job. My title, my results and my reputation had become my identity, and without them I wasn’t sure who I was. I liked being the person who could walk into a challenging situation, find the solution and make everything OK again. What I didn’t know is whether I could still do that without the title and the authority of the position.
People assume I walked away from everything. I didn’t. The skills that made me a good executive – clear thinking, strategic, reading people and getting things done – I still use every day. What changed is what they’re pointed at. I stopped optimising for approval and started designing a life that works. Today, I use my executive skills to create strategies for not-for-profit organisations and their programs, I use my organisational skills to manage a global business that operates over different time zones and I still know how to take a challenging situation and find the fastest and simplest pathway out of it and forwards.
Somewhere in the middle of recovering, I wrote my first book. I call myself an accidental entrepreneur, because I never planned any of this. I was just trying to work out how a smart, capable woman ended up so far from herself, and how to get back.
And I didn’t become a simplicity expert overnight. I tried to make my recovery perfect, too, which, I’ll admit, is quite funny. It took me a while to see that simplicity isn’t another thing to get right. It’s permission to stop doing what isn’t yours to do.
So, what do you actually do now, and what makes it different?
Bronwen Sciortino: I help people see that they don’t need to overhaul their lives to feel better. I call my approach the Keep It Super Simple principles, and I share them through my books, keynotes, workshops and online programs. I work with people globally through my books, corporate programs, leadership development programs, conference platforms, retreats , professional mentoring and in the online environment. I share practical and easily implemented steps and inspire individuals to simplify their lives. I’m also regularly sourced as a media expert through global TV, radio, podcasts, vlogs, blogs, YouTube, Facebook live, print media and blogs.
What makes it different? I’m not going to hand you a ten-step plan to become a better you. I’m a recovering perfectionist, and I know how fast “self-improvement” turns into another list you’re failing at. I’d rather ask: what can you take off your plate? What can you say no to? What could you set up so your day works for you instead of against you?
My values? Four: simplicity, honesty, choice and self-trust. Simple doesn’t mean simplistic, and it definitely doesn’t mean easy. It means knowing what matters and having the courage to let go of the rest. Honesty is telling the truth about how you’re really doing, which high achievers are brilliant at avoiding. Self-trust is knowing you already know more than you think.
I gave “no is a complete sentence” a whole chapter in Keep It Super Simple, because perfectionists can’t just say no. We say no with a three-paragraph explanation, an apology and a plan to make it up to everyone. Learning to say it simply, kindly and without guilt changed my life.
I’ve had clients who moved from being an absolute ‘Yes’ machine to being able to discern the things that work for them, say ‘Yes’ to those things and then go on to turn their entire business around.
What am I most proud of? That I turned the hardest period of my life into something that helps other people. That readers in countries around the world have picked up Keep It Super Simple and it has changed their lives. And that the second edition is now out in paperback, e-book and audiobook and is receiving 5-star awards almost every where it goes.
Do you still struggle?
Bronwen Sciortino: Of course. “Recovering” is the operative word. The pull to over-deliver, over-commit and over-explain hasn’t gone anywhere. I just notice it sooner now. I’m now highly attuned to the signals my body is giving, and I know exactly when I need to stop, rest, recover and go again. I’m not someone who has it all figured out. I’m someone who’s learned to notice and choose again.
What keeps me going when things get tough is the messages. The leader who finally took a proper break. The woman who said no for the first time in years. The reader who told me my book made them feel less alone. The person who said that their relationship with their family has changed for the good because they created steps that supported them. If something I’ve learned helps one person make a different choice sooner than I did, every hard day was worth it.
What would you say to someone who’s quietly wondering whether there’s another way?
Bronwen Sciortino: I’d leave you with a question. Not a big one. Just this: what’s one small thing you keep saying yes to that you’d never choose if you were starting from scratch?
Don’t answer it yet. Ask a friend, then ask them theirs. I’d bet that conversation goes further than either of you expects.
And you don’t need a crisis to start. You don’t need to resign, sell the business, meditate in a cave or rebuild your life. You need to start noticing the small choices shaping your days and make one or two of them differently. You don’t have to throw everything away to change your life.
If you want to go deeper, that’s what my books are for. Keep It Super Simple is where it all began, with chapters on busyness and on why “no” is a complete sentence, and the second edition is out now in paperback, e-book and audiobook. The Economy of Enough takes the conversation further and looks at ways we can find what ‘enough’ is for each of us. More about these books can be found at my website.
Because here’s what I know for sure: your life isn’t built by the big moments. It’s built by the thousands of small choices in between. And you can start making different ones today.
Through her work as an author, speaker and simplicity expert, Bronwen Sciortino is helping high-achieving people rethink what success should cost. Her message is a welcome reminder that meaningful change doesn’t require burning everything down, and that the smallest choices, made consciously, can reshape an entire life.
With the second edition of Keep It Super Simple now available, Bronwen continues to use her voice and experience to help people stop waiting for permission and start living in a way that works for them.
